Adrien’s heart was young but in the end it stopped beating for good. The young Cit Turin footballer, just 18 years old, suffered a cardiac arrest on Wednesday, died during the night. Already yesterday evening, Thursday, the Molinette doctors had declared brain death: the family of the boy of Cameroonian origins agreed to the donation of organs and during the night the explantation took place.
Since his arrival in the reanimation ward of the Molinette Emergency Department, the conditions of the attacker in force on the Cit Turin Promotion team were critical. During an Under 19 training session of which Adrien was a part, Sandjo’s heart stopped and from that moment a race against time was taken to save him. In the hospital, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (Ecmo) was practiced but the heart never started beating autonomously and without the aid of machines, so much so that in the end, after more than a day of attempts, even the doctors had to surrender.
Adrien, who had lost his father at a very young age to an accident, leaves his mother, two sisters and a great void in the world of amateur football that has tightened around his family from the first hours after the illness. «A very painful tragedy for everyone – says the president of the Regional Committee Christian Mossino – which should not have happened. In my name and in the name of all Piedmontese football, I express my sincere condolences to the family and to the mother who phoned me personally after the bereavement. It is an even more painful drama because it takes place at Christmas time and affects the whole world of amateur sport made up of many fathers and parents ».
The president of the Cit Turin Angelo Frau spent many hours in the hospital alongside the family, helping them in the darkest moment: «It hurts to see such a young life broken. Adrien had been with us this year and was loved by everyone, even outside the world of football: his middle school teacher also came to the hospital yesterday. He was bursting with life and enthusiasm: he wanted to be a footballer, he was sure he would make it and he trained with method and rigor to learn all the movements in attack. When he was notified of the representative call on his cell phone, he exploded with joy. At the dinner at the end of the year, just a few days ago, opening the envelope we gave to the children with a symbolic sum of 50 euros, he told me that he would use them by buying books ».