Reggio Emilia, July 1, 2024 – First the husband, now the beloved youngest son Justin Danilo. La 49enne Nataliya Kravchenko She is a woman who has faced many losses and difficulties in her life, starting with the move from her native Lutsk in Ukraine to Italy, and yesterday she once again bowed her head before a destiny that he hit her in the most tender of affections.
“He was a good boy, handsome and good”, she says, distraught by the pain and the immense heat that weighs on the area where is assisting with the searches. With her, her daughter Tania, her eldest son Nick, and her son’s two very young friends, who witnessed the tragedy first-hand. And then her new partner, son-in-law and other family members. For hours they waited, sitting on the rocks on the banks of the Enza, for the miracle to happen.
“Danilo was born in Ukraine but we brought him to Italy as a child. He grew up here. His father died… We live in Reggio, where he attended the Simonini professional institute – explains his mother -. Now he worked as a plumber at the Pellicciari companyin the industrial area at the entrance to the ring road behind McDonald’s. He was a boy full of joy.”
He sighs and adds: “The divers stopped the search, there is too much current. Let’s wait. Let’s hope the river took him somewhere, but I live. That he was hurt, but he is alive.”
Nataliya then reports the story of her son’s two friends: “They tried to save him, but when they turned to get a stick, something to pull him up… he was gone. He knew how to swim, but not even the divers there. they manage to enter. Even if someone knows how to swim, he’s useless down there… Now they’ll try to look for him with a dinghy, with a robot, a drone… I don’t know.”
The woman shows photos of Danilo on his cell phone on his birthday, surrounded by relatives.
He’s smiling, with very dark hair and the earring.
In one shot he is sitting next to his beautiful sister, his mother hugs him, kissing him proudly on the head and he sticks his tongue out in amusement.
On the banks of the Enza, the other family members do not wish to speak: “It is too delicate a moment”.
The two friends who were with Danilo were also heartbroken they had arrived at the banks of the stream to escape the heat of the city: the carabinieri questioned them under the porch of a nearby house to reconstruct in detail the dynamics of the accident and acquire the video filmed before that fatal dive. They too do not feel like telling, crushed by grief.
Around their petrified figures like the rocks they sit onthe searches are in full swing, coordinated by the Fire Brigade on an “advanced command post”, a mobile unit to which the Saf teams of Reggio, the divers of Florence and the helicopter of Bologna refer. Only in the evening, with the darkness, will they stop.
