Yesterday morning, thanks to the intervention of a helicopter and with the help of the staff of the Autosoccorso Di Vita of Sondalo of the Valtellina rescue consortium, on the orders of the magistrate Daniele Carli Ballola was recovered from the reservoir of the former Aem in Sernio the Apecar which, in the afternoon of the previous day, had crashed there with the two elderly residents of Mazzo di Valtellina inside, one of whom later lost his life. The small truck, driven almost certainly by 95-year-old Dino Morella, father of a retired firefighter, saved by the permanent firefighters of the Tirano detachment who intervened with fellow volunteers from the same town on the border with Switzerland, was was seized by the Sondrio Prosecutor’s Office, led by Piero Basilone, and entrusted to the judicial custodian for subsequent technical findings, first and foremost, on the state of efficiency. The investigation will probably be for vehicular homicide.
Meanwhile, the magistrates have decided that on the body of the victim, 87-year-old Ausilia Caterina Rinaldi, widow of her carpenter husband for many years, who lived in the family home in via Albertinelli 2 and reassembled in the morgue of the Morelli hospital in Sondalo by the workers of the Cavenaghi funeral home in Tirano, an autopsy will be carried out which should help shed full light on the dramatic accident. The tragedy occurred in the San Gottardo area, on the opposite bank to the one where the cycle path is located, near the Stelvio state road 38, in the municipal area of Lovero, a few meters beyond the border with Sernio.
The autopsy examination will be carried out next week and the task will almost certainly be entrusted to the pathologist Luca Tajana of the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the University of Pavia or to his colleague Elena Invernizzi. Only after the sons Valerio Foppoli, who works at Enel, and Emilio, an employee of Morelli, with other relatives and friends will be able to say their last goodbyes in Ausilia’s funeral which will be celebrated in the town. At the time of the accident, the small truck was near an orchard, to be precise at a point above the very steep slope along which it suddenly rolled before ending up in the icy water of the dam. The investigations of the Carabinieri of the Operational and Radiomobile Unit of the Tirano Company, led by Captain Riccardo Angeletti, will attempt to ascertain what really happened and what may have caused the accident. Many hypotheses under consideration. Was it a mechanical failure? Or was the handbrake of the small porter, weighing around 600 kilograms, not properly tightened? Has the land given way? Or was an incorrect maneuver carried out and, due to a terrible mistake, first gear was engaged, causing the vehicle with the two pensioners on board to fall from below?
A leap into the void of a few tens of meters, ending up in the icy waters, where the woman lost her life, thrown out during the fall, while her friend Dino, Emilio’s father, an esteemed retired firefighter – yes he is fortunately saved, thanks to the timely arrival with a dinghy of the Tirano firefighters.
Still under observation. The 95-year-old survivor, after being stabilized on the spot by the medical staff of an ambulance and a medical vehicle, was later transported urgently with an Elisondrio aircraft sent to Lovero by Areu (Regional Emergency and Urgency Agency) at the “Morelli” hospital in Sondalo. Yesterday the pensioner was still being kept under observation for another 24 hours in the Upper Valley hospital, but the clinical picture appears to have significantly improved and the prognosis could soon be definitively resolved. His salvation would rightly be called a true miracle. And, at that point, he would become a precious witness to reconstruct the dynamics of the dramatic accident. In the meantime, the mayor of Mazzo di Valtellina shares the pain of the victim’s family. «The community of Mazzo is shocked by what happened, declares the mayor Franco Saligari – and I express my condolences to the children and my closeness to the whole family affected by the serious loss».
