The parents are still in shock. Their car has a broken window, what remains of the desperate attempt to save their daughter, probably forgotten in the car in front of the kindergarten where she never arrived. The treatment of the 118 doctors was useless, by now it was too late to save the little one left in the car right outside the nursery.
The tragedy took place in the military citadel of Cecchignola, in the southern area of Rome, a maze of streets and buildings where hundreds of soldiers live. A city within a city, with its church, its schools, its sports centres, but also barracks and condominiums. Here every road bears the name of a military corps, the grenadiers, the sappers, the chauffeurs. In the one dedicated to the riflemen there is the Luinetti kindergarten, opposite the General Directorate for military personnel. In the large parking lot in front of the entrance, a Red Megane with a smashed window.
This morning, according to the first reconstructions of what happened, the father of the child – a carabiniere on duty at the General Staff of Defense – should have accompanied his daughter to the nursery, while the mother should then have picked her up in the afternoon. However, upon the woman’s arrival, the teachers explained that her daughter had never arrived at school. When the woman saw her husband’s car with the baby inside her, she fell ill. A passing soldier thus decided to break the glass to try to let the baby breathe, but unfortunately it was useless. The 118 doctors who then intervened on the spot tried to revive her but without success. Previously, they had been alerted by a woman who had called 112.
The area was cordoned off and subjected to seizure to allow for the findings of the case and to clarify exactly what happened. The carabinieri of the Eur company and the investigative unit are investigating the case. According to sources from the prosecutor’s office, it would still be a tragic fatality, thus confirming the hypothesis that the father forgot his daughter on the egg in the back seat. The spouses were heard by the investigators. And the man is being investigated for abandonment of a minor, a due act.
What happened in Rome is yet another tragedy of the so-called ‘Forgotten baby syndrome’. One of the last cases in Italy dates back to 2019, when in Catania the father of a two-year-old boy left his son in the car for five hours in the sun. Again, the parent was taking the child to daycare. The father only remembered his little son left in the car when his wife called him in alarm, after going to the nursery to pick up the baby. The man rushed into the parking lot finding the lifeless little boy, he immediately took him to the emergency room of the Polyclinic, but even in that case the doctors could no longer do anything to revive him. According to expert data, the “Forgotten Child Syndrome” has caused the death of 11 children in Italy since 1998. The first case, due to a tragic twist of fate, was registered in Catania. The ‘distraction’ of an Sgs Thompson technician caused the death of his 20-month-old son left in the car for seven hours in the sun, with a temperature of 40 degrees. The man, also an engineer, had gone out with his Punto to accompany his son to kindergarten, curled up in his car seat and forgotten in the car in the multinational’s parking lot. In 2000, the child’s father was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended sentence, for manslaughter.
In 2019 the Parliament approved the decree on the obligation of anti-abandonment seats in the car, that is, equipped with an acoustic alarm to remember the presence of the child in the car. A provision, whose first signatory was Giorgia Meloni, which entered into force on November 7, 2019 and which provided for the obligation for children under the age of four. The devices, in addition to the visual and audible alarms, can also be connected to the parents’ smartphones through special apps.