More blood on the Sicilian roads, and again along the state road 624, Palermo-Sciacca, sadly known as “the road of death”. The victims are a 16-month-old child and a twenty-year-old woman of Moroccan origins, who lost their lives on a stretch of road where there are two junctions, Altofonte and Giacalone. The victims were called Selma El Mouakit and little Abd Rahim Gharsallah and it seems they were related by kinship, although it was denied that they were mother and son.
They were traveling in a Fiat Punto, driven by an R23-year-old girl from Palermo who, apparently, had a blood alcohol level much higher than the legal limit. The young woman and a fourth person, another 21-year-old girl also from Palermo, who was on board the small car were injured.
From what we understand, the two victims and the injured girls had spent the night in Palermo and were returning to Partinico (a municipality in the metropolitan area of the Sicilian capital). For reasons that are still being investigated, the car ended up against the guardrail. The rescue was quick, but there was nothing that could be done for the twenty-year-old and the child. Instead the other two girls were taken to hospital. One of the two is under prognosis reserved for the Municipality of Palermo.
Selma El Mouakit, 20 years old, and little Abd Rahim Gharsallah due to the violent impact of the car against the guardrail they flew out of the passenger compartment of the car. The bodies were in fact found by rescuers outside the Fiat Punto in which they were travelling. It remains to be seen whether the accident was the direct consequence of the driver’s lack of clarity, due precisely to the effect of alcohol. Every aspect will be verified by investigators. The investigations are entrusted to the Carabinieri.
A section of State Road 624 is temporarily closed in both directions to allow interventions and measurements. The car was seized. State road 624 has been the scene of continuous accidents over time, many fatal; a month ago a 33-year-old young man lost his life on a motorbike. There are several “death roads” in Sicily and in the various provinces of the island, and the high number of deaths of twenty- and thirty-year-olds in road accidents is impressive. Increasing in recent years, and especially on weekends. A real emergency.
