The 45-year-old mother remains in prison, placed two days ago in custody by the Caltagirone prosecutor for having left her quadriplegic son under the sun for hours, until his death. The investigating judge of the Calatino court has in fact validated the arrest for neglect of an aggravated minor and issued a precautionary custody order.
The woman is locked up in the Catania prison in Piazza Lanza, in isolation due to the anti-Covid quarantine. This morning, during the validation hearing with the guarantee questioning, the woman, Romanian and widowed for some years, availed herself of the right not to answer.
A decision made by his lawyer, waiting to have all the documents of the investigation available. According to what has been reconstructed so far by the police investigators and the Caltagirone prosecutor’s office, the 14-year-old boy, unable to move due to his serious physical and mental illness, would have remained under the sun for hours in August, precisely in the days in which the Sicily was under a sweltering heat, probably on a balcony or terrace of the house where she lived with her mother, on the outskirts of Grammichele, in the Catanese area, a few kilometers from Caltagirone.
The mother would have “forgotten”, as the prosecutor assumes. Then, however, he would try to help him by transporting him into the house, laying him in his bed and turning on the room air conditioner to maximum power. But it was evidently too late.
She had given the alarm herself, at least 36 hours after the death of the boy, whose body has numerous bruises and burns, as the coroner ascertained during a first cadaveric inspection. An autopsy is scheduled in the next few hours, at the end of which the prosecutor will make further assessments on the accusations.
The woman, at the moment, must answer for the abandonment of a minor, aggravated by the fact that in the past another abandonment of the boy had occurred, and at the time the woman was reported together with her now deceased husband. His position could, however, worsen with a murder or death charge as a result of another crime.