BARI – The second degree trial for the train disaster of 12 July 2016 on the Andria-Corato route began this morning in the Court of Appeal in Bari. In the head-on collision between two trains traveling on a single alternate track regulated by the telephone blocking system, considered by the prosecution to be “unsafe and obsolete”, 23 people died and 51 others were injured. In the first instance, in Trani, on the 15th June 2023, the court sentenced the station master of Andria Vito Piccarreta (to 6 years and 6 months) and the driver of the train that left Andria and headed to Corato, Nicola Lorizzo (7 years), acquitting 14 other defendants and also excluding civil liability of Ferrotramviaria, accused of an administrative offence. Piccarreta and Lorizzo were convicted of cooperation in a train disaster, murder and negligent bodily harm aggravated by failure to comply with workplace safety regulations. Both, jointly and severally with Ferrotramviaria, will have to compensate the civil parties for damages.
In today’s hearing, the Attorney General asked the Court (president Antonio Civita) to listen to 38 witnesses, including defense witnesses already heard in first instance, judicial police officials and officials of the Puglia Region, as well as technical prosecution consultants and defense.
Deputy prosecutor Marcello Catalano also requested the admission of a 2017 report from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, declared unusable by the Trani court, and the Court’s provision of an official technical consultancy to evaluate the various considerations techniques, advanced by the prosecution and defense during the first degree trial, in particular on the obsolescence of the train interchange system. The deputy prosecutor underlined, during the hearing, the “rudimentary management, based only on telephone communication”, of the train circulation system on that route, “entirely entrusted to man” and therefore “fallible”. The defense opposed the prosecution’s requests. The Court will decide on the preliminary requests at the next hearing on 12 September.
