Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CRIME

Italian truck victim was ‘too short to be seen’

A truck driver who knocked over and killed a woman as she walked along a pavement is only partly responsible for her death because the woman was too short to be a seen, according to the driver’s insurance company.

Published: 12 May 2015 10:27 CEST

Italian truck victim was 'too short to be seen'

This is not the truck driver in the story. Truck driver photo: Shutterstock

Gabriella Serangeli, 65, was knocked over by a truck on the morning of March 15th last year as it came out of a supermarket car park in Cesano, north west of Rome, Corriere della Sera reported.

Despite the cries of horrified passers-by, the driver Marco De Paolis did not stop the vehicle in time and the woman died from her injuries.

According to the company that the vehicle was insured under, it was not possible for the driver to see the woman because she measured just 1m 50cm, shorter than the height of the vehicle.

“[The]cause of the accident is the imprudence of the woman, who was in a position, in front of the truck, which made it impossible [for the driver] to see her, as she was lower than the vehicle”.

As a result both the woman and the driver were judged responsible for the accident, meaning that the woman’s family were entitled to just half the compensation.

But according to a legal advisor at the public prosecutor’s office Clara De Cecilia, the driver did not see the victim because they did not look to the right before moving the truck.

“The pedestrian can’t be blamed because she was walking correctly on the pavement and because she had been doing so for several minutes, as is normal, thinking she had been seen,” she said.

The prosecutor has now obtained an indictment against the truck driver for manslaughter.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

Rescuers seek four missing after deadly Italy power plant blast

Rescuers on Wednesday continued to search for four workers still missing after an explosion at a hydroelectric plant in Italy, which has already left three confirmed dead.

“The toll is four missing and three dead,” a fire service spokesman told AFP, revising downwards a toll of four deaths given by local authorities on Tuesday evening.

But there are fears the death toll will rise, amid difficult searches at the Bargi hydroelectric plant run by Enel Green Power on Lake Suviana, near Bologna.

Searches are ongoing, with authorities calling the rescue operation complex as water continues to enter the plant.

The explosion of a turbine, whose cause has not yet been determined, occurred on the eighth floor below the water level, said Bologna’s prefect Attilio Visconti.

“On the ninth floor there was flooding due to a turbine cooling pipe” that brought in several metres of water, Visconti told reporters outside the plant.

A fire service spokesman, Luca Cari, told the ANSA news agency that rescuers “are not working with much hope of finding the missing (people) alive”.

Still, the department’s regional director Francesco Notaro told reporters that workers “maybe found shelter somewhere else” within the large space following the blast.

Firefighters working at the site of an explosion at a hydroelectric power plant on Lake Suviana in central Italy, near Bologna. (Photo by Vigili del Fuoco / AFP)

Five people were injured, according to the AGI news agency, which named the dead as three men aged 73, 45 and 35.

Enel Green Power, the renewables unit of energy giant Enel that operates the plant, offered its “deepest condolences” to the victims and their families following what it called a “serious accident”.

On Wednesday, it said that “efficiency works” had been underway at the time, the contracts for which had been awarded in 2022 to three main companies, Siemens, ABB and Voith.

“From what has been reconstructed, the testing of the first-generation group had already been completed in the past days and, at the time the accident occurred, the testing of the second group was underway,” the statement said.

“The company expresses its gratitude to the relevant authorities that are working tirelessly on rescue operations, to whom it is providing maximum support.”

It previously said the dam basin of the plant had not been damaged in the accident and that there had been no impact on local or national energy supplies.

The mayor of the nearby town of Camugnano, Marco Masinara, called the explosion a “terrible workplace accident” that affected the “entire community”.

“It seems there was a floor slab collapse and rescue is difficult as a lot of water entered inside the eighth basement floor,” he said late on Tuesday.

Url copied to clipboard!