“I was convinced that I had taken Stella to kindergarten like every morning, I also met with my wife around 11 to agree between us who was going to pick her up, I thought I had”. Sandro, 45, carabiniere, is the father who on Wednesday forgot his 11-month-old daughter, Stella, in the car parked in front of the building which is also a stone’s throw from his workplace, the Office of the Directorate General for military personnel at Cecchignola. Seven hours of agony for the little girl, left tied to the seat in the passenger compartment scorched by the sun, until she died. The man speaks, destroyed, to the investigators who questioned him again yesterday morning after reporting him for abandonment of a minor. A due act in what appears to be an absurd, tragic, fatality. His cell phone was seized by colleagues from the EUR company and the investigative unit investigating the case, as was his Renault Megane. The baby carrier will be subjected to an appraisal to verify if it was equipped with the device that triggers automatically in the event of abandonment of the baby. There was actually no alarm. An autopsy will be carried out today at the Tor Vergata polyclinic on the child’s body.
PAIN
Meanwhile at Serafico where the 45-year-old and his wife, 40, a nursery school teacher, have lived for years, friends and family are shocked. “We are all broken. Sandro and his wife are closed in their pain, no parent can prepare for a tragedy of this magnitude,” they say. Yesterday in the couple’s apartment there was only room for pain and a desperate attempt to find comfort. «I can’t believe it – says a neighbour, originally from Finland – that mother was bursting with joy and the little girl was so beautiful and happy. When wife and husband hung the pink bow on the door for her birth, it was a celebration for everyone. I saw Sandro grow up in this condominium. Very good people.”
«Sandro can’t rest because of what happened. The little girl was so sought after and so loved», explains a family friend. «Thanks to his partner – she adds – she had started a new life. No one can believe what happened because he has always been very careful ». Already the father of two other children born from a previous relationship, one of whom lives with him, the little girl had arrived after the civil wedding celebrated in 2021 with Stella’s mother. An enchanted ceremony, celebrated in the greenery and surrounded by roses and all the loved ones of all time. Finally, even for the carabiniere – who “had a childhood marked by pain for the loss of his mother”, as the family friend still explains – a new page was opening, like in a fairy tale.
WHITE FLOWERS
Wednesday, however, the drama. A nightmare. “What did you do?” the woman yelled at her husband when rescuers pulled the body of their little girl from the car in the parking lot in front of the kindergarten. Yesterday the woman, obviously, wasn’t in her school, from her pupils. The last festive day of elementary school next door was frozen by the news. «We all remember – says a mother – how happy the teacher was when she got pregnant. She had so much wanted this little girl at the age of forty, maybe she thought she couldn’t have more children. But providence is great.” «She lived for her little girl», add the colleagues, heartbroken.
Her friends didn’t leave her alone even for a minute, they hosted her in their house on Wednesday and for the night. So Sandro’s friends and colleagues. An extreme action is feared.
A phone call arrived in the parish of San Virgilio on Wednesday night.
«A friend of mother’s called – says a parishioner – in despair, as soon as there is the authorization from the judicial authority, the funeral will take place. Just 9 months after baptism. It was September 23rd. There was immense joy, many children filled the church. Now we just have to pray for those parents, you can’t judge.” On the gate of the kindergarten in via dei Fucilieri, in Cecchignola, yesterday many left flowers and notes in memory of little Stella: “You will always be our angel”, she reads.
Read the full article
on The Messenger