The daughter of one of the victims of the doctor-justice: “15 years of sentence are few”
In recent days the Court of Assizes of Trieste has condemned Vincenzo Campanile, the former Monfalconese anesthesiologist of 118 in Trieste at 15 years and 7 months in prison accused of having killed nine elderly people with injections of powerful sedatives (including Propofol) during home emergency interventions. Campanile was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter. Furthermore, he was convicted of false public deed for not reporting the use of medicines in the reports. Campanile and the Giuliano Isontina University Health Authority (Asugi) were jointly sentenced to pay compensation for damages in favor of the relatives of the victims who filed a civil action, with a case to be promoted before the civil judge for liquidation.
The elderly were between 75 and 90 years old, all with pathologies (four were cancer patients) and seized by a sudden worsening before requesting the intervention of 118. The deaths date back to the period between November 2014 and January 2018. Campanile was also banned in perpetuity from public office and banned from practicing medicine for five years, but the sentence was lower than expected due to the recognition of a mitigating factor.
Gabriella Orazi, 56, lost her mother, 81-year-old Maria Kupfersin, who died ten minutes before her daughter arrived home. In an interview with Repubblica, the woman says: “Fifteen years are few because no one can claim the right of life and death over others. But in any case, it will not be prison, or any compensation that we relatives may have, that will bring our loved ones back to life”.
The woman then tells Repubblica about the day of her mother’s death and her conversation with the doctor, to whom she said “that my mother may have had a stroke and that there was no need to take her to the hospital, because perhaps she would never get there. And in case she survived en route, he did not know under what conditions. At one point she asked me if my mom had ever talked about palliative care. I said no, so I told him I was on my way home, begging him to keep her alive a little longer to be with her.”
According to what the woman told Repubblica, the doctor replied as follows: “His sentence will always remain engraved on me: “I cannot”. In retrospect, when the paper covered the investigation and when my mom’s body was exhumed for autopsy, I think I understood what the anesthetist’s “I can’t” meant. Maybe that meant she’d already injected her with that drug. That she had already killed her. But until the news came out in the paper, I hadn’t suspected a thing about what had happened to my mother. Because I’ve always trusted doctors.”
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