Fatal accident in Minervino di Lecce: reported for road homicide and failure to provide assistance

At the conclusion of a meticulous investigation conducted by the Carabinieri of Minervino di Lecce together with their colleagues from the Operational Section of the Maglie Company, a 38-year-old body shop mechanic known to the police was reported at large and will have to answer for road homicide and failure to provide assistance. His employer also ended up in trouble with him.

The investigations by the men of the Arma began after the dramatic accident occurred on the evening of November 4th last year, on provincial road 62 which connects Minervino di Lecce to Giuggianello, where an elderly couple, a 65-year-old man and a 70-year-old woman, who had broken down with their car about a kilometre and a half from the town centre, had set off towards the village. Unfortunately, on that poorly lit stretch of road, a vehicle coming from Giuggianello headed to Minervino had hit the woman in full before her husband's eyes, who had witnessed the tragedy without being able to do anything to avoid it.

For the poor 70-year-old, the rescue efforts were useless, because the impact had been so violent, while her husband had been taken to hospital and then discharged after a few hours. The driver of that car did not stop to provide assistance. and even the emotional appeal of her husband, who through the media had asked the hit-and-run driver to report to the police station, had been of no avail.

The investigation immediately proved very difficult for the Carabinieri who intervened on the scene the evening of the accident, but in the end the attention to detail and particulars led to the complaint at large of a 38-year-old man believed to be responsible for the accident that cost the 70-year-old's life. The fragments of a rearview mirror were decisive for the investigations, as they were found to correspond in shape and serial number to those originally mounted on the vehicle used by the hit-and-run driver. Furthermore, the Carabinieri reconstructed the entire route that the car took after the accident by analyzing dozens of videos taken by public and private video surveillance systems present not only in the area of ​​the accident, but also in the municipalities of Giuggianello, Giurdignano and Spongano.

Furthermore, Further evidence was obtained from the movements of the telephone in use by the driver, through the analysis of telephone records. Once the license plate of the hit-and-run vehicle was identified, it emerged that the person responsible for the accident so as not to be discovered and thus escape investigations by the police, he had repaired the damage to the bodywork of his car, consequently his employer also got into trouble for having allowed him, probably without asking too many questions, to carry out that work in his own workshop.

The Provincial Command of Lecce, constantly engaged in an awareness campaign and checks for road safety which also involves young people, reiterates the importance of respecting the rules of the Highway Code and recommends, in the event of an accident with injuries, to stop immediately to provide assistance to the people involved, after which you should call the single emergency number 112 to have help intervene.