The most accredited hypothesis is that of an extreme gesture. The car stops on the tracks, with the bars lowered at the level crossing via Peschiera in Cologne. The regional engineer sees her at the last moment. He applies the brake, but the impact is inevitable and devastating. The car gets stuck under the front of the convoy and is dragged for over 100 metresalong the tracks. The woman in the car has no escape. The tragedy occurred around 10.30pm on Tuesday 23 April, in the Franciacorta countryside, drenched in rain, late at night. The only witnesses: the terrified eyes of the engineer who gets off the train and raises the alarm.
Also shocked but unharmed were the passengers heading from Milan to Brescia. The emergency services, the police, the police and the firefighters arrive in force. The woman, sitting in the driver’s seat, a fifty-year-old from the area, was torn apart by the impact, stuck in the tangle of metal sheets of the train and her small car. Railway traffic is blocked. The area is secured. And investigations are underway to verify whether the tragedy could be the result of a terrible accident, of a fault in the level crossing barriers.
But from the investigations emerges, together with the perfect functioning of the closure of the bars, the far from remote hypothesis of a deliberate choice. A choice evidently dictated by a state of desperation such as not to evaluate the possible consequences for train passengers. Fortunately, in the braking of the convoy, in those long seconds that tragically brought the train closer to the car, no one was injured, at least physically. Fear and disbelief indelibly spread among those who, at that moment, were on board the Regional, thinking only of returning home and ending the day. Stories and destinies met on the tracks that will remain intertwined forever.
