Sant’Eusebio district, a populous and popular area on the hills of Genoa overlooking the Bisagno. A 67-year-old man, GV, who lived alone in the house dies and no one reports his absence. When the smell of decay reaches the outside of the apartment, the neighbors decide to seal the mail with scotch tape.
The macabre aspect of the news is intertwined with the considerations on our society. Reduce discomfort even before asking questions. The tenants of the building cannot be criminalized because the man probably led a life on the margins, was followed by social services and perhaps from his accommodation on other occasions unpleasant odors perhaps related to food had spread.
In via Mermi, the site of the episode, the city police and firefighters intervened after the alarm raised by the social services who were unable to get in touch with the man. When the agents arrived they found the door sealed with tape. Once they managed to enter they found the old man on the ground on a duvet. The coroner found that there were no signs of violence on the body and that it was the man who had been dead for a week. None of the neighbors had called the authorities or rescuers to report that there was a suspicious smell coming from that apartment, but someone, no one knows who, had closed the cracks in the door with scotch tape.
On the affair Republic asked Roberto D’Avolio, president of the Municipality IV Media Val Bisagno: “It is an episode on which we are investigating and which struck us very much. Also because, according to the first reports, it happened in a district, Sant’Eusebio, where there is a strong spirit of community, of mutual solidarity. It is clear that situations like these tell us how much it is necessary to invest even more in assistance to the elderly and to frail people in general “.