Pompeii, mother and daughter drowned in the river: the dangerous parapet had already been reported

Pompeii. One of the owners of the company "Saco Strade" is defending himself in court on trial for the deaths of Nunzia Cascone and Anna Ruggirello, who died on November 21, 2013, following a collision with the car of a finance officer, Catello D'Auria, along Via Ripuaria. The Fiat Panda carrying the two women crashed through a guardrail and ended up in the swollen Sarno River. Mother and daughter died almost immediately; the young woman's body was recovered in the car, while the mother's was found a few months later along the coast of Sardinia. "I had already reported to the municipality in June that the guardrail was damaged, and it had been noted in the municipal office register in September. "We didn't intervene with the company," he says, "because it wasn't our responsibility." In 2013, the company was awarded the ordinary road maintenance contract by the municipality of Pompeii. On trial are finance officer Catello D'Auria, who was speeding along Via Ripuaria, and the two owners of the maintenance company, Antonio Salzillo and Antonietta Coppola. They are charged with manslaughter and failure to perform official duties.
“We were only supposed to take care of repairing the potholes,” says Antonio Salzillo, “and monitoring the territory. I wrote everything down in a register that was then delivered to the offices. We had to intervene immediately on the roads, but for the parapet we needed an assignment. The work to be done was also communicated verbally. It wasn’t up to us to restore the parapet.” Of course, the guardrail was damaged and it was known. Two weeks earlier another car had ended up in the river, but the Sarno wasn’t in flood and they were saved.