The searches for the two people missing in the waters of the Adige, along the Gorzone artificial canal, which flows into Anguillara Veneta and acts as a natural border between the provinces of Padua and Rovigo. It’s about the driver of a car ended up in the stream in the afternoon and her rescuer, the policeman of the Padua anti-crime squad Domenico Zorzino, 48 years old, who was on the embankment intent on jogging.
The rescue attempt
It was around 5pm when the firefighters received the call from Zorzino, who reported that he had I saw the car go off the road at the crossroads it makes via Ca’ Matte and via Cannaregio and then rapidly sinks into the canal below. The firefighters intervened immediately – from Piove di Sacco, from Rovigo and from Venice – arriving on site with a mobile crane, the team of divers and a helicopter to patrol the entire area from above. On the bank of the river, the firefighters found the personal belongings of the policeman, who, after calling for help, would have plunged into the frozen waters to try to extract the body of the man stuck in the sinking passenger compartment. He would have succeeded, since no bodies were found in the vehicle later recovered by the firefighters, but she would not have been able to drag it to the shore. The bodies of the two victims had not yet been found at the moment, probably dragged away by the currents. Among the items found on shoreeven the mobile phone from which the request for help is supposed to have originated, the same number that the firefighters had tried to call back, probably precisely to make Zorzino desist from carrying out a gesture as altruistic as it is dangerous.
The hypothesis
Gorzone – especially in that area – in fact has waters that could have caused him and the second victim, Valerio Buoso, rapid hypothermia and which have already been the scene of three other deaths, all in similar circumstances. On 26 January last, the 27-year-old Tunisian Mahmoud Benyoussef had been brought ashore lifeless, still at the wheel of the Citroen C3 with which he had sunk into the canal along via Borgo, in Borgo Forte. Again due to an independent road exit, Anita Bertazzo and her daughter Pamela Breseghello, aged 75 and 48, lost their lives on 10 August. Even then, the waters of the Gorzone had swallowed the car they were traveling in in a few minutes, under the helpless gaze of a passerby who had alerted the fire brigade. Their bodies were recovered only after several hours.