A fatal accident, the result of an absurd sequence of events that shattered a young life. This is what happened on Saturday night around 2am along the Modena-Sassuolo ring road. For the 24-year-old Giacomo Olivieri from Formigine (he would have turned 25 in July) it was a Saturday evening with friends after a week of work. He was returning home to Casinalbo at the end of the wedding party of a couple of friends. However, Giacomo never made it home on Saturday, he was hit by a car along the ring road while he was helping a girl who had had an accident.
The exact dynamics of what happened is still being examined by the Mirandola traffic police who have the task of reconstructing all the details of the accident, but the direct witnesses who reported when they saw it were the ones who provided the picture of that deadly chain. From what has been reconstructed so far, Giacomo Olivieri was driving along the Modena-Sassuolo road in his car, headed towards Formigine. Shortly after leaving for Baggiovara he saw a car stopped against the guard rail: the driver, a young woman, had hit a porcupine.
It had been a real carambola: the car, in an attempt to avoid impact with the animal, ended up with its wheels on the ground along the overtaking lane and then skidded and stopped against the road protection on the opposite side.
Instinctively Giacomo slowed down, pulled over to the right and stopped to provide assistance. There was already another car stopped on the scene with four indicators, which was providing assistance. After making sure that the driver had escaped unharmed, he moved with her towards the center of the ring road to try to remove the animal’s carcass, debris and dirt from the roadway which had ended up on the asphalt which could make traffic dangerous.
An act of civic sense that cost him his life. There is no lighting on that stretch of the ring road and the permitted speed is 90 kilometers per hour. At that moment another car arrived. The girl behind the wheel didn’t see the young man in the middle of the road in time: she hit him head-on, causing him to be thrown for a few metres. Rescue services began immediately. 118 sent an ambulance and a medical vehicle to the scene, the healthcare workers did everything they could, but the violent impact had caused irreversible trauma. The 34-year-old driver, who reportedly tested negative for alcohol, was unharmed.
Giacomo Olivieri lived with his mother in Casinalbo. He worked as a courier for the company specializing in frozen foods Bofrost in the Bologna area. Passionate about basketball (he had played for a long time in Formigine’s Pgs Smile basketball team) and horses, he leaves parents and two brothers. He also mourned in the Reggio Emilia area where he had attended the agricultural technical course at Zanelli, up to the third year.
Many messages of condolence and also from Zanelli leave a thought: “The school expresses closeness to the family and underlines Giacomo’s great gesture of generosity, he gave his life to help a person in difficulty”.
