The two friends start filming him with their cell phones: Danilo smiles in the sun, makes a joke, looks at the Enza torrent that flows tumultuously three meters below his bare feet and dives in with the recklessness of his 19 years.
In an instant he will be dragged by the whirlpools and whirlpools onto the rocky seabed, where the water is frozen and dark.
It ended with this immense drama, yesterday shortly after 12.30, a trip by three very young people from Reggio who wanted to spend a few hours in the cool of a tree-lined clearing just downstream from the sports area of the Lido and the bridge to Traversetolo.
Giustino Danilo Colella lived in the city with his widowed mother. His body has not yet been recovered despite the massive deployment of forces: firefighters with teams from Reggio and Sant’Ilario, the special diving unit arrived from Florence with 5 divers specialized in high-risk operations, the helicopter, the Carabinieri coordinated by Chief Marshal Giovanni Tondo, the local police. Also on site is the Red Cross of Canossa, which arrived first with the hope of having to resuscitate a half-drowned swimmer, but then remained with its ambulances to assist the young man’s relatives and provide possible assistance to the firefighters.
The three boys – Danilo, a former classmate and the latter’s girlfriend – reached the Enza via Via Di Vittorio, a road that winds under the bridge to a clearing from which you can reach the riverbed. They had set up a small grill to cook food and then came up with the idea of diving from the bridle, a concrete structure that like a high pier juts out toward the center of the riverbed. Maybe they had already done it other times; it’s not easy to reach that point if you don’t know the way. When Danilo entered the water, he immediately understood the danger. He called for help, the two friends would have created a sort of human chain anchored to the muddy and slimy bank to reach out where he was trying to stay afloat. He went up and down, went under and resurfaced. They looked for a branch to make him grab onto, but in the end he never resurfaced.
The two friends in shock called 118 and the rescue machine was set in motion. But the Fire Brigade divers themselves, despite the equipment deployed and the presence of about fifteen colleagues on the banks, were unable to explore that stretch of river as a waterfall creates a very strong current, and where on the bottom (4.5-5 meters deep) there are rocks and fences.
Furthermore, the precipitations at the beginning of the week made the current even faster. Marshal Tondo and the police from the helicopter carried out a search of the upper area, but unfortunately the body was not sighted. Finally, around 6 pm, it was decided to travel along the Enza from the bridle towards the valley with the dinghy in search of Danilo’s body.
