WHAT HAPPENED
1.05pm: Patrizia, Bianca and Cristian arrive by car in Premariacco. A camera frames the passage
1.29pm: Patrizia makes the first of 4 calls to 112. She speaks to the operators three times, in one case she is unable to connect to the line. In total you will be on the phone for about 30 minutes
1.35pm: the three boys are noticed by a school bus driver on the Roman bridge. He stops, records the scene with a cell phone and calls the police
1.47pm: Patrizia makes the last phone call to 112 asking for help. Meanwhile, the Udine firefighters arrive on site first
2pm: it is the moment in which the three young people hugging each other to resist the water are overwhelmed by the river which drags them away
2.02pm: the firefighters’ desperate attempt to recover the boys by throwing a rope from a crane. Cristian barely misses her, the girls can’t get close
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
UDINE – Some cardinal points are starting to emerge in the investigation that the Udine prosecutor’s office is conducting, together with the carabinieri, into the tragedy that last Friday swept away the lives of twenty-year-olds Patrizia Cormos and Bianca Doros who were with Cristian Molnar on a small beach in Natisone in territory of Premariacco, in the Udinese area. «Patrizia made four phone calls to the single emergency number 112 – explained the chief prosecutor Massimo Lia yesterday – and the first is at 1.29pm, the others in the minutes immediately following».
Calls in which he not only asked the rescuers for help but also to warn his mother. Tragic moments that passed as fast as the rapids of the river and that they were filmed by passers-by’s cell phones. “From the first investigations, everything took place over a period of time that can be roughly quantified in half an hour – he adds – and from a situation of apparent tranquility, that tumultuous flow of the Natisone river which then overwhelmed them”.
Now the prosecutor’s office has formulated a precise hypothesis of crime: «Manslaughter against unknown persons because in these matters, in order to proceed, it is necessary to configure responsibility of the type of omission, not of commission». At first, however, the file was “informative”, that is, without any hypothesis of crime or suspects. That of the prosecutors is a technical choice thanks to which they are conducting «the appropriate investigations to ascertain whether the rescue was timely». Everything will revolve around some questions. Has everything possible been done to avoid the tragedy of the three boys? Were the rescue operations timely? Why was a helicopter flown first from Venice’s Marco Polo airport and then one from the nearest Campoformido?
Lia, however, immediately clarifies that having formulated the hypothesis of manslaughter does not mean that we are one step away from closure: «I would like to point out that, at present, there are no specific elements that make us go in this direction but the checks are in the initial phase and in any case, in nature, tragic fatality also exists”.
The recordings of the conversations between Patrizia and the telephone operators are now under scrutiny. We will need to ascertain what was said in each of the calls as the Natisone level continued to rise. Also, whether the rescuers were given the exact location of where they were located. If, then, the three realized that the situation was becoming so dangerous that their lives were at risk. There is also another fact to clarify: the second call to 112 was unsuccessful. Patrizia was unable to connect to the line due to a problem with the communications bridge? Was she interrupted before answering or did she interrupt herself? The third and fourth phone calls, however, lasted a long time.
In Udine, if on the one hand the investigation progresses, on the other the pain. After the autopsy was not carried out – given the “reasonable certainty” given by the medical analyzes on the death due to drowning and various traumas – Bianca and Patrizia’s funeral home was opened. Citizens and authorities paid homage to the three and today there will be a moment of prayer with an Orthodox priest and a Catholic one and then the bodies will be transferred to Romania. Instead, despite the effort of 60 firefighters on the Natisone, there is no news of the 25-year-old Cristian Molnar. Almost five days after the tragedy, every minute that passes greatly reduces the possibility of finding him alive.
