A “compatible” shape among those of hundreds of commuters getting off the train at 9.40am last Thursday. In the videos only the denim jacket and the backpack can be distinguished. Then other cameras film him more and more clearly as he walks among the shops of Milan’s Central Station. And the doubts disappear definitively when the frames frame Edoardo Galli stop in front of a place and have an ice cream.
For a handful of minutes the boy wanders aimlessly among the shop windows, as if he had to waste some time. In the end another person appears next to him, maybe a friend. Certainly someone he knows well. The two seem to talk calmly before leaving Milan together.
There is a carried out in the research of high school student Edoardo Galli, the 16-year-old who disappeared a week ago from Colico in the province of Lecco, disappearing into thin air while going to school. Not an escape to the mountains of Alta Valsassina – as had been hypothesized – in a sort of “survival test” without water or food, but a voluntary and planned departure. Because the cell phone was turned off from the moment the boy got on the train that took him from Morbegno to Milan.
It was early Thursday morning and that was the last moment Edoardo was taken back alive. The young man had left his home in Colico, where he lives with his father Alessandro, his mother Natalia (of Russian origins) and his younger sister, and had taken a train to Morbegno to get to the scientific high school he has been attending for years (here is the interview with the principal). But once at his destination he got back on a train, alone, in the opposite direction, towards Brianza and Milan.
It took days of analysis of the cameras by the Lecco carabinieri, led by Colonel Alessio Carparelli, to find another trace of Edoardo. The discovery of his arrival in Milan led the prefecture of Lecco and the prosecutor’s office, directed by Ezio Domenico Basso, to suspend searches at high altitude with the firefighters and mountain rescue. And it has directed the investigations increasingly towards a voluntary removal excluding both the most tragic hypotheses, such as that of a suicide, and remote and suggestive ideas linked to kidnappings or violent actions.
Among the investigators there is a certain confidence in a possible “happy ending” in the next few hours. The impression is that now there is a clear lead and a less murky picture of the boy’s acquaintances. He works in the utmost secrecy but from what has transpired Edoardo Galli is no longer in Milan. Which suggests that there is a precise idea about the place and circumstances in which the 16-year-old spent these last days. And he wouldn’t be in danger.
Now the police are checking his possible presence on high-speed trains or buses leaving from Milan. The family spoke of a convoy headed to Zurich, Switzerland. But this is a circumstance examined with caution. Like the many reports that have arrived in the last few hours, the most detailed from the Bergamo area. And the hypothesis of an escape to Russia.
Edoardo’s grandparents are “worried” and fear that he may have “trusted the wrong person”. He left only two passports (Italian and Russian) and a sleeping bag. But it is not known how much money he has available. «Edoardo contact us, he’s coming home. We are here and just waiting to hug you”, yet another tearful appeal from his parents.
