Naples. Anger and grief erupt in Secondigliano over the death of little Michele Volpe, the 8-year-old girl who died from injuries sustained when the car she was traveling in with her mother, her partner, and her 16-year-old sister overturned.
Without a license, driving an uninsured car, approved for two but with four people on board: there is a long list of irregularities at the origin of the accident that cost the little girl her life and that led to the arrest for road homicide of Francesco D'Alterio, the man who was driving, the partner of the little girl's mother, who had just finished serving a sentence for theft under house arrest.
The car where the little girl was located overturned shortly after 5 in the morning in Giugliano in Campania, along the Via Domitiana, at number 99. The Carabinieri, who intervened on the scene, immediately found a series of anomalies.
Starting with the number of people on board the Smart Fortwo: four, a mother and her two daughters, aged 8 and 16, and the woman's partner at the wheel. The driver, Francesco D'Alterio, aged 47, did not have a driver's license and the car was not even insured. Not only that. From the investigations carried out, it emerged that the man had finished serving a sentence for theft the previous day, under house arrest.
The four were literally crammed into the tiny Smart. The 8-year-old girl was in the arms of her mother, Anna Boscaglia, 37, both sitting in the passenger seat, and in the small trunk, the back part of the car, was Jennifer, the 16-year-old girl.
The youngest passenger had no escape and died on impact. The other 16-year-old girl was taken to the hospital in Pozzuoli for probable fractures. The girls' mother is under observation in the hospital, while the driver only suffered a few abrasions.
Carabinieri from the Varcaturo station and the Giugliano Radiomobile unit, who are trying to determine what may have caused the car to overturn , also analyzing the hours leading up to the impact, administered a breathalyzer test to the man. D'Alterio was subsequently arrested for vehicular homicide.
During the validation he will have to explain to the investigating judge what happened and what caused the car to overturn. The man was also subjected to all the tests to determine whether he was fit to drive at the time of the accident.
“There is anger and pain for yet another tragedy, the result of a series of careless driving and serious irresponsibility, which in all likelihood could have been avoided,” says Severino Nappi, leader of the Lega in the Campania Regional Council, for whom “the new Highway Code will help stop this massacre on our roads.”
A tragedy, underlines Francesco Emilio Borrelli, deputy of Alleanza Verdi Sinistra, the result of a “sick culture that doesn’t care about road safety”.
