PIOMBINO. The French door that leads onto the terrace of the Public Assistance headquarters, in via Giordano Bruno, opens and lets a boy out: he picks up the flag, stops it at half-mast with a black ribbon. Around him, the emotional silence of a city broken by tragedy. Samuel Kitar, 32 years old and 118 volunteer, didn’t make it. A dramatic accident occurred yesterday morning along the motorway that connects Genoa with Rosignano, shortly after the Sarzana toll booth in the direction of Livorno.
The accident
It’s almost eight in the morning. The motorway that connects Genoa to Cecina is filling up with commuters’ cars and trucks. Among them there is also a man from Bergamo driving an articulated lorry. He is listening to the radio when he feels a blow to the tail of the tractor which throws him forward. He slams his face violently against the windshield and then tries to regain control of the steering wheel, but he still doesn’t understand what happened. He will understand it immediately afterwards, when his vehicle stops and he looks out. There is a white van stopped in the middle of the road: its front part is completely crumpled. It is the vehicle that crashed at full speed into the articulated lorry. Samuel is in the driving seat.
Motorists’ calls to 118 and the traffic police begin to come from the motorway. The agents of Viareggio (responsible for that stretch of motorway), the emergency services of the province of La Spezia and the Ligurian firefighters intervene. The latter, from the Sarzana detachment, immediately took care of making the road safe, while the rescuers tried to resuscitate the 32-year-old stuck between the sheets of the vehicle. But it’s useless. The trauma was enormous. The prosecutor’s office at that point gives the authorization to move the body. The firefighters take care of it. And it’s not that simple. In the meantime, a queue of over seven kilometers has formed on the motorway. Also because the stretch of motorway between Sarzana and Carrara was completely closed for the entire duration of the operation. It will only reopen in the late morning.
The traffic police, however, are responsible for reconstructing the dynamics. At the moment the most likely theory is that the 32-year-old had an illness or fell asleep. In fact, there were no signs of braking on the asphalt. The truck driver driving the articulated lorry was taken to hospital under yellow code with facial trauma.
A shocked city
The news of Samuel’s death quickly spreads from the site of the accident to Piombino, the city where he was born and raised. His former colleagues from the various associations in the area are the first to be shocked as soon as the messages begin to crowd the chats. No one, or almost no one, feels like talking but many know him and his partner well, who also volunteered for a long time both in the Public Assistance of Piombino and in the Misericordia of Campiglia Marittima. «We practically grew up together – says Gabriele Giansanti, now an operator at the Misericordia di Portoferraio and a childhood friend of the 32-year-old – we were a small group of eighteen year olds who always met in the Perticale gardens: some of us had already started volunteering at the Misericordia di Piombino and thus Samuel also approached the world of associations. I remember him as a golden boy – he continues – someone who was always cheerful and helpful, but also attentive and empathetic towards patients”. From the Misericordia Samuel moved on to carry out his civil service at the Public Assistance, where he remained for a long time as a volunteer, and then at the Misericordia di Campiglia, becoming a driver-rescuer. «Samuel was a golden boy – Renzo Panetti, governor of the Misericordia Campigliese, remembers him – much more mature than his age, he was someone who really believed in the mission of volunteering».
In Piombino he worked in the logistics sector of Azzurra srl, a company specialized in the wholesale of fish products: the same one in which his father has also been employed for many years. Samuel had only been hired a few years ago but had already distinguished himself for the seriousness he put into his duties. «He was a decent boy, very little else can be added about a tragedy that affects us all – the company says – we are all shocked, we huddle in pain with the family».
