The last meters to home were missing. Two more traffic lights on Via Cristoforo Colombo and Luca Pupillo, 26 years old, bartender on the roof-top of the Bulgari hotel in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, would have taken the driveway of his house in Infernetto on board his Kawasaki Z900. Instead, he never arrived home. 19,100 kilometer of the road that connects the center of the capital to the sea of Ostia, four hundred meters before the traffic light with via di Acilia. It’s 4.30 on Saturday morning. Luca’s black and green motorbike, for reasons yet to be ascertained, collided with the Piaggio Beverly driven by a 34-year-old off-duty carabiniere. Both two-wheeled vehicles travel in the same direction, towards the coast, on the straight road.
Luca Pupillo, who was the boy who died in the accident on Colombo: from working as a barman at Bulgari to his love for motorbikes
THE IMPACT
The impact knocks Luca off his seat and he flies onto the asphalt. And he will have no escape because his body will be hit by a Ford Fiesta that was arriving at that moment. The 21-year-old Italian girl behind the wheel stops to help. When the first responders arrive on the scene, the young driver appears completely in shock. The firefighters of the XII Monteverde Group on patrol as “accident shift” subjected her to the “precursor” alcohol test, waiting for the results of the analyzes to which she will be subjected at the Grassi hospital in Ostia. The result is negative.
The injured 34-year-old was also transported to the Lido emergency room by ambulance but, fortunately, not in serious condition. The stretch of road between the intersection with Via di Malafede and the one with Via di Acilia in the direction of Ostia remained closed until around 11.30am to allow the ritual investigations and the removal of vehicles. Inevitably the closure caused inconvenience and very long queues, especially considering the sunny day at the weekend with many Romans heading towards the coastal beaches and forced to make a forced detour onto the already very busy Via del Mare or Ostiense. The X Mare and Gpit (traffic emergency response group) patrols took care of the traffic.
Luca Pupillo is the 72nd victim on the streets of Rome since the beginning of the year. A massacre. And as underlined by commuters “Colombo confirms itself as one of the most dangerous roads”. In fact, the road with an average of 10 deaths per year is considered one of the riskiest high-speed arteries in Italy. Usually, however, accidents occur due to failure to respect traffic light crossings. What happened, however, between the two motorbikes headed in the same direction is unclear. Just as perhaps we will never know whether, at the time of his fall to the ground, Luca was still alive or not.
THE PASSIONS
The boy was one of the most sought after bartenders in the capital and beyond. “The locals fought over it,” recalls a family friend. Luca had also been working in Dubai and even before that on the Adriatic coast. In the past he had also worked at Fiumicino airport and was well known. Photos with colleagues scroll through Instagram
He had represented Bulgari during the Campari competition. His colleagues were shocked: “He had worked with us until late, then as always he got on his motorbike to return to Ostia, we still didn’t know anything.” Motorcycles had always been his passion, dreams come true. After all, there had never been any money problems at home. He purchased the latest one, the green and black Z900, in March and proudly showed it off as his cover photo on social media. A restless boy during his school years, he then decided to specialize in a new passion: that of cocktails, for the creation of which he had shown an uncommon ability right from the start, making it his profession. «By now he was an adult with “his head in order”, he was in love and was about to get married», his friends tell us, in despair. In addition to his father and mother, he leaves behind a younger sister, whom he adored.
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The morning
