The 73-year-old Albert Stocker from Velturno, found on Monday morning in a meadow near Bressanone with various bite wounds, died of hypothermia. The wounds caused on his body by an animal are rather superficial and, although they have caused some blood loss due to damage to peripheral vessels, they do not appear compatible with the production of hemorrhagic shock. This is what was established during the autopsy at Bolzano hospital.
The lesions did not affect vascular/nervous structures of significant vital importance. According to the medical examiner, the death is attributable to a state of hypothermia, given that the body temperature detected by the rescuers at the time of discovery was just 22 degrees.
The man’s clothing is instead analyzed in the laboratory of the Mach Foundation in San Michele all’Adige, where tests were already carried out in the past to establish the identity of some bear specimens in Trentino. The outcome is expected tomorrow.
The alarm was raised on Sunday evening, when Stocker did not return to the retirement home where he lived. The search operations, which began in the evening, were resumed this morning at dawn. At 7.20 the missing man was found unconscious by a passerby in Pinzago, lying on a lawn. The emergency doctor, the White Cross, the mountain rescue team and a search team immediately went to the scene. The man, seriously hypothermic and injured, was resuscitated on site and then transported to Bolzano hospital with the Aiut Alpin air ambulance, where he later died.
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