The coffin of Julia Sends, landed around 10 this morning on board a plane that today brought the body of the eighteen-year-old volleyball player who died in Istanbul back to Italy, 2 days after the team’s arrival and the day after her parents’ return home. At the moment it seems that the parents’ decision is not to set up a funeral home.
In Julia Ituma’s phone the latest mystery. The mother: “The Turkish police canceled everything”
by our correspondent Brunella Giovara
Certainly for now there is the funeral on Tuesday at 11 in the church of San Filippo Neri, in the Bovisasca, in the area close to the neighborhood where Julia’s parents live. It will be celebrated by don Ivan Belliniwho already tomorrow in the homily of Sunday mass will dedicate a moment to the girl and in the meantime has prepared a written memory for the young volleyball promise, published as an online bulletin on the parish website and printed in 180 copies available in the churchyard.
“Right in our sports club – writes Don Ivan Bellini – she began to take her first steps as an athlete and as a girl and with us she discovered her talent. Educating, especially young people, means bringing out the best in them, from their hearts and from their soul. Among us Julia was able to discover her passion and, in a fraternal atmosphere, she found relief and friendship for many years”.
For the moment, even on the part of the church there are no initiatives planned before the funeral on Tuesday. The parish priest will meet Julia’s parents between today and tomorrow. “I didn’t know her personally – explains Fr Ivan – her parents are Nigerian and I know she was a Christian, right here in this parish sports reality she had experienced the first moments of sporting and human growth, and from here she left to enter the sporting world at a competitive level, thanks to a small sporting reality he experienced the possibility of integrating and this was very beautiful and very important”.
“When I arrived here as parish priest – he added – I was informed that the negotiations for his transfer to other more important sports teams were now being concluded. The parents live in the neighborhood next door and would have been part of another parish But Julia came here precisely to participate in the activities of the San Filippo Neri volleyball club which she attended until 2019″.
Yesterday mom went to Türkiye
Yesterday Elizabeth’s mother and Julia Ituma’s aunt had to undergo the painful procedures to get back as soon as possible the body of the young volleyball player who died from a fall from the sixth floor of the hotel on the Bosphorus where she was staying with her team. It was a dramatic impact with a reality that was too unimaginable and painful, in search of explanations for a tragedy that unfortunately seems to be the result of a voluntary gesture with increasing clarity.
Igor Volley Novara denies that Ituma wrote “goodbye”
Igor Volley Novara “categorically” denies that the young woman wrote ‘goodbye’ in the team’s WhatsApp group shortly before her death, as reported by the Turkish media, and the teammates claim that they “can’t get over what happened: nothing has never even hinted that such a thing could happen, we would have intervened”.
The aces of Julia Ituma: the prowess on the field of the volleyball player who died in Turkey
There is remorse for not having understood and enormous regret for Julia’s choice “not to share her pain with us”.
In fact, the company wants to define “absolutely false the rumors according to which third parties, worried about Julia’s condition, contacted some teammates before the tragedy to stay close to her”.
Ituma’s smartphone has been examined by Turkish investigators
At the center of attention is therefore the mobile phone that the young woman used for a long time in the last hours before her death, which would contain traces of the last conversations via voice or chat between the volleyball player and other people. The smartphone was immediately examined by Turkish investigators who are conducting the investigation into Julia’s death, one of the possible keys to understanding something more.
Autopsy performed yesterday morning
Instead, you will have to wait at least a few days to get it the results of the autopsy, which was performed yesterday at the forensic medicine institute in Istanbul. Times compatible also with the need for the results to be translated into Italian. Yesterday afternoon, the family members and team technicians who had remained in Istanbul left.
Julia Ituma, the images of the hotel cameras before the death of the volleyball player
The latter will rejoin the squad that had already returned and which will have a few days to recover from the shock before returning to the pitch again after Wednesday night’s Champions League match. The Women’s Volleyball League has in fact ordered the postponement of the championship match between Novara and Chieri to April 19, a match entirely dedicated to Julia.