The skull of the fugitive has been found, the first of the victims to emerge from the new excavations of Regio V, of which only part of the skeleton had been found until now.
In an initial phase of the excavation it seemed that the upper portion of the thorax and the skull, not yet identified, had been cut off and dragged downwards by a block of stone that had overwhelmed the victim: this preliminary hypothesis arose from the observation of the position of the boulder with respect to the void of the body imprinted in the ash. The continuation of the investigations at the intersection between Vicolo delle Nozze d'Argento and Vicolo dei Balconi, where the first skeletal remains had emerged, brought to light the upper part of the body, located at a decidedly lower level than the lower limbs. The reason for this stratigraphic anomaly must be sought in the presence, below the body's lying plane, of a tunnel, presumably from the Bourbon era, the collapse of which led to the collapse and slipping of part of the upper stratigraphy, but not of the stone block, still inserted in the original stratigraphy. Death was therefore presumably not due to the impact of the stone block, as initially hypothesized, but rather to probable asphyxiation caused by the pyroclastic flow.
The skeletal remains identified consist of the upper part of the thorax, upper limbs, skull and jaw. Currently being analyzed, they present some fractures whose nature will be verified, in order to be able to reconstruct more accurately the last moments of the man's life.
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