A grandfather ran over his one and a half year old grandson in the backyard while he was maneuvering his car. The child is now hospitalized in serious condition. It happened yesterday morning in Bibbiano, in the Enza valley in the province of Reggio Emilia. The child was transferred to Parma, to the Maggiore hospital where he is still in the intensive care unit. The grandfather does not rest and prays: “I could never think of having killed my grandson.”
The pensioner holds his head in his hands. He squeezes a handkerchief and at times sobs. The first news from the hospital is reassuring, but he can’t find peace. «I could never think of having killed my grandson …».
The nightmare seems to have escaped, but he still cannot hold on to the child, who will be two years old on April 22, and who has a special bond with him: in fact, he bears the same name as his grandfather. The elderly, 69 years old, was maneuvering to get out of the courtyard of his house, behind the wheel of a Fiat Doblò, when the impact with the child, now hospitalized at the Maggiore hospital in Parma, occurred. Next to him is his grandmother, 66, a former nurse. The couple moved here from Naples five years ago, “to be close to our son, his wife and their two children.” They speak of fate: «First we accompanied the oldest granddaughter, who is 5 years old, to school, and then we went back. The baby’s mother and I were hanging the clothes outside – says the grandmother pointing to a shed attached to the house -. At one point my daughter-in-law invited the baby to come back inside. He went back into the house, but then he turned the latch on the front door and went out again ».
At the wheel of the Doblò, at 10.30, the grandfather was making a very tight ninety-degree bend in the courtyard: «I was going out to buy water. I went very slowly, at a walking pace. My wife yelled: Stop! I was already practically stationary, while the boy ran to the car and hit it. He was very fast, so much so that I didn’t even see him ».