After nine days of hospitalization, Luca Piscopo, the 15-year-old who felt male after eating sushi in a Japanese restaurant in Vomero, didn’t make it. He had spent the evening with three friends, and already a few hours after dinner he had felt ill, with a high fever, diarrhea and vomiting. An inexplicable death. The Prosecutor’s Office, which ordered the autopsy, has already entered two names in the register of suspects with the hypothesis of manslaughter: the owner of the restaurant, a 55-year-old Chinese citizen, and the general practitioner who prescribed Luca the home therapy, aged 61.

Symptoms after eating in an “all you can eat”
The parents of the 15-year-old, still in shock, try to understand what happened. The son was very healthy, no previous pathology. The ordeal for him began on November 23, after he went to a place that offers the “all-you-can-eat” formula for 14.99. Among other things, the other boys who ate with him also accused the symptoms of food poisoning, in a confirmed case for the salmonella bacterium (which, however, rarely leads to death). To shed light on this, investigators hope to be able to obtain answers from the autopsy performed in recent days.

The investigations
Now the magistrates have asked the experts appointed for the examination (the coroner Alfonso Maiellaro, the anatomopathologist Oscar Nappi and the infectious disease specialist Tiziana Ascione) to ascertain whether the 15-year-old had undiagnosed health problems, to specify the nature of the food ate last November 23, and to check if it was followed and taken care of correctly. According to what emerged, after the first symptoms, the doctor had prescribed an antipyretic for fever and lactic ferments for intestinal disorders, then he had added an antibiotic. His condition had improved after a week: the fever had dropped and the situation seemed to be slowly improving. Then the sudden worsening, and on December 2nd, his heart stopped beating.

Investigations on responsibility clarify, in addition to the causes of death, if they are conceivable in relation to someone. A tragedy that shocked the neighborhood and the friends of the fifteen-year-old: a boy loved by everyone. A banner was also displayed in his memory with the words: “Hello, little Luca” on the occasion of the Napoli-Atalanta football match.

At the moment the restaurant is open because, at this stage, the investigators have not identified elements that would suggest the adoption of measures against the restaurant. The investigation is conducted by the prosecutors Federica D’Amodio and Luigi Landolfi.