Mother and daughter died of poisoning in Campobasso: hypothesis of rat poison contamination

Five healthcare workers (three doctors from the Cardarelli hospital in Campobasso and two doctors from the emergency medical service) have been registered as suspects for the death of 15-year-old Sara Di Vita and her 50-year-old mother Antonella Di Ielsi, who died due to food poisoning at Christmas. The husband is stable. New police findings in the house, Christmas Eve food seized. Autopsies on Wednesday

Five doctors are under investigation for the death of Sara Di Vita, 15 years old, and her mother, Antonella Di Ielsi, 50 years old, who died from probable food poisoning. The Prosecutor’s investigation aims to shed light on what happened in the Pietracatella house in the hours preceding Christmas and then again between 25 and 27 December inside the emergency room of the Cardarelli hospital in Campobasso. The health workers registered in the register of suspects are three doctors from Cardarelli, two Venezuelans and one Italian, and two doctors from the medical guard. The alleged crimes are manslaughter and negligent injury. Some news is expected from the autopsies which will be carried out on Wednesday. Gianni Di Vita, husband and father of the two victims, also intoxicated, is hospitalized in stable conditions at the Spallanzani hospital in Rome. The eldest daughter, who would not have participated in the family meal, had been hospitalized as a precaution in the same hospital.

The investigations

“The investigation is primarily aimed at reconstructing the entire chain of medical interventions – explained the prosecutor Nicola D’Angelo – with specific regard to the previous visits of the fifteen-year-old and her mother to the emergency room: it appears, in fact, that the minor had presented herself to the facility twice before her death. Given the extreme complexity of the clinical picture – the prosecutor added – multidisciplinary investigations were arranged to verify the possible existence of negligence or underestimation of the clinical picture of the minor and the mother, as well as errors in the application of the diagnostic protocols”.

Christmas Eve food seized

Meanwhile, the police returned to Pietracatella’s house yesterday too for new investigations. Among the investigations, in addition to those on the food taken the day before in the family home – clams, mussels, cuttlefish, cod and mushrooms, the latter packaged and certified products, consumed on 24 December – checks are being carried out on any accidental contamination of flours. A few months ago in a mill that produces flour owned by relatives of the father there was a disinfestation against the presence of mice. The possibility of contamination of the flour with rat poison is not excluded, but for now it is only one of the many hypotheses in the field.

The internal investigation of the ASL

The regional health company also intervened in the matter with the general director Giovanni Di Santo who provided the first results of the internal investigations. “The causes that led to the deaths – he said – are not yet known, but there is an initial certainty and it can be traced back to a poisoning whose nature is still unknown; it cannot be ruled out that it could be food or chemical poisoning”. An event on which we must await the clinical results and on which, explained the general director, Spallanzani of Rome is also “continuing to do research”. To a specific question on the correctness of the clinical and diagnostic processes implemented in the emergency room when the two women entered, Di Santo said that the medical and healthcare staff “confirmed that they had observed” the guidelines and good practices. The diagnostic investigations, according to company management, were carried out according to consolidated practice, all this on the basis of “an initial evaluation”. On the discharge of the two women from the emergency room, Di Santo explained that they were “shared with their families” as the clinical picture “presented non-specific symptoms”.