Reggio Emilia, 19 April 2024 – In the death of Elena Russo20, may have played a role not only in the fact that she was speeding above the speed limit, but also in the fact that she had been provided with a work car with worn tiresdated and different from each other, violating safety regulations: one of the two wheels dated back to 16 years ago, the other to 8, making them older than the car itself.
She, law student in Modenahe paid for university by delivering pizzas to homes, while he cultivated his dream to become a lawyer and volunteered for the Red Cross. On the evening of January 30, 2022, after 8 pm, while from Saint Bartholomew was traveling along via Tirabassi towards Castelbaldo, the young woman crashed with the Fiat Punto against a pole, overturned and lost his life. If initially it might have appeared like the classic misfortune in which one did ‘everything on one’s own’, the tenacity of parents Annamaria and Francesco, protected by the lawyers Giulio Cesare Bonazzi and Simona Magnani, has opened a new glimpse of truth and possible responsibilities.
So much so that yesterday morning the judge of the preliminary investigations Andrea Rat ordered that within ten days the Prosecutor’s Office formulate the forced indictment against the two legal representatives of the pizzeria: it appears an accident at work with fatal consequences that would have resulted from a violation of safety regulations due to the condition of the tires, which were worn to the point of not guaranteeing grip on the road.
The investigating judge’s decision came after the report of the engineer Mattia Strangi, appointed by the court and heard yesterday morning at the conclusion of the evidentiary incident. Even the public prosecutor Enrico Finocchiaro, recently appointed to the Prosecutor’s Office and who inherited the file, shared the existence of a causal relationship between violated workplace safety regulations and death: a conclusion supported by the family’s lawyers. The lawyer Nino Giordano Ruffini, who assists the two owners, has an opposite opinion, according to whom instead the tragedy resulted only by the girl’s high speedcalculated by the defense consultant at around 130 kilometers per hour at a point where the limit is 50.
A value that has been estimated in variable ways: for the first expert appointed by the Prosecutor’s Office, Davide Manfredi, it was around 140 per hour, and there were no defects in the machine; for the engineer Santo Cavallo, appointed by the parents, no more than 50, because darkness and road conditions would not have allowed them to go any further. The first expert appointed by the court, Silvano Simoncini, had estimated the value of the Prosecutor’s Office much less; then in January the judge ordered an additional investigation and yesterday Strangi, in addition to identifying the tire problem, on the basis of the photos indicated a speed of about 110.
While awaiting the course of justice, Elena’s memory remains immortalized in the classroom that Unimore wanted to dedicate to her indicating her as a model student.
