Bus Massacre: Trial begins Appeal for 21 defendants

Review the convictions of eight of the 15 defendants and review the acquittal of six other defendants in the trial for the deaths of 40 passengers and the driver of the bus that crashed from the Acqualonga viaduct on the A16 Naples-Canosa highway on July 28, 2013. This is what the Avellino Public Prosecutor's Office is requesting in its appeal, which will now be heard before the Naples Court of Appeal, less than a year after the first-instance ruling. No appeal has been filed against only one defendant, engineer Vittorio Saulino, an official at the Naples Civil Motorization Department, who demonstrated in the first-instance trial that he never participated in the falsification of the crashed bus's inspection documents and that the DMV's computer system had been accessed fraudulently and in his absence.
Among those acquitted are the managers of Autostrade per l'Italia and the former CEO of Aspi Giovanni Castellucci, currently at the center of a dispute with the Atlantia group that a few days ago blocked the second tranche of the liquidation of the top manager, also involved in the investigation into the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa. In Avellino, the prosecutors had requested a 10-year prison sentence for Castellucci, as well as for all the other managers, officials and maintenance workers. The sole judge Luigi Buono, on January 11, sentenced the managers Nicola Spadavecchia and Gianluca De Franceschi to 6 years in prison, Michele Renzi, Paolo Berti, Bruno Gerardi and Gianni Marrone to 5 years in prison. The main responsibilities for the deaths of the 40 passengers on the bus, which left Pozzuoli for a trip to the Terme di Telese and then a pilgrimage to Pietrelcina, have been attributed to the owner of the bus Gennaro Lametta, sentenced to 12 years in prison, and to the civil motorization officer of Naples Antonietta Ceriola, sentenced to 9 years. Lametta entrusted his brother Ciro with a dilapidated bus, without the inspection documents, and absolutely not able to circulate safely. And in fact, just before the Acqalonga viaduct, the landslide system went out of order after a joint broke. The bus first collided with several cars and then three times against the barrier on the edge of the bridge, until it broke through it and fell from a height of 25 meters. Antonietta Ceriola, in agreement with Lametta, falsified the vehicle's inspection, backdating it after the accident. The Aspi managers were instead attributed with responsibility for the lack of maintenance of the barriers.