Marco Belletta, a 52-year-old Neapolitan doctor at the Emergency Room of the Caserta Civil Hospital, will be tried, accused of having caused the death of Romano Piccolo, the father of Caserta basketball, after accessing the hospital on October 31, 2020. The preliminary hearing judge Daniela Vecchiarelli of the Santa Maria Capua Vetere court has ordered the professional, defended by the lawyer Angelo Rossi, to be sent for trial. The first hearing is scheduled for November before the judges of the first section of the Sammaritan court.
According to the reconstruction by the deputy prosecutor Gerardina Cozzolino, the health worker was on duty when Piccolo entered the Caserta emergency room for a fractured left pelvic bone and failed to subject the victim to an ultrasound examination of the abdomen and pelvis. This examination should have been carried out for the Prosecutor’s Office, in light of the victim’s access diagnosis considering the patient’s age, 86 years old, and by virtue of what was suggested by the orthopedic consultant on duty who prescribed the urgency.
An exam that was supposed to exclude or confirm the presence of an ongoing hemorrhage following the fracture suffered by Piccolo. The health worker would have therefore also failed to perform a closer monitoring of the hemoglobin values and vital parameters of the 86-year-old. The manager would not have even recorded the progressive loss of consciousness and the presence of hematuria and that therefore a process of anemia was underway.
Romano Piccolo, after being hospitalized at night the day after October 31, 2020, died due to ‘hypovolemic shock from massive hemorrhage’ caused by a post-traumatic fracture in a subject already suffering from pathology. The omission of the health manager therefore, for the Prosecutor’s Office, contributed to causing the death of the flag bearer of Caserta sports. The deputy prosecutor who requested Belletta’s indictment underlined that he “had the responsibility to do his job and also carry out investigations highlighted by colleagues with urgency”. The victim’s family members are assisted by the lawyer Alberto Coppo.
