6 December 1990, the Salvemini massacre
A day like any other a Casalecchio di Reno, in the province of Bologna. At 10.38 on December 6, 1990 the students 2^ A pCorporate elites are concluding the lesson. Suddenly hell. A crashed military aircraftan MB 326, crashes into the branch of theSalvemini Institute creating a chasm several meters in diameter. Inside about 200 boys aged 14 to 18, half of whom remained trapped in rubble, smoke and flames. The balance sheet is terrible: 12 young victims, 88 woundedeven serious. And it wasn’t worse only due to the timeliness of the intervention of the firefighters and health workers. To lose their lives Deborah Alutto, Laura Armaroli, Sara Baroncini, Laura Corazza, Tiziana di Leo, Antonella Ferrari, Alessandra Gennari, Dario Lucchini, Elisabetta Patrizi, Elena Righetti, Carmen Schirinzi, Alessandra Venturi. Only four students of that class manage to save themselves.
At the moment of impact, the pilot was no longer on the military plane. The second lieutenant Bruno Viviani of the III Stormo – 603 Squadron, had launched with the parachute. In January 1995 the process charged to the pilot, his commander and the control tower officer, charged for disastrous culpable And multiple manslaughter. On February 28, 1995 the sentence of conviction of the 3 military defendants to two years and six months, to jointly pay the costs of the proceedings, to compensation, to be established with a separate judgment and to provisional payments to the civil parties. After two years a very fast appeal process overturns the first degree sentence: all acquitted because the fact is not a crime. The reasons will be filed almost two months late. There are no new items; simply for the Court of Appeal, the process was not even started, since the defendants are not guilty of the causes of the damage. In January 1998, the fourth criminal section of the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal presented by the civil parties and by the Attorney General of Bologna.
On December 10, 1990, the funerals, with an immense crowd accompanies the boys on their last journey. Salvemini students read a message: “… We don’t want to make requests but just ask ourselves how it is possible to transform the authentic pain of many in the face of the harshness of these deaths, into a daily activity aimed at respecting life… We today feel like a community, that community which does not always we feel that we are. And this is what we want to gather from this tremendous experience…”.
That classroom, after a decade, becomes “Memory Hall”; it is decided not to close that gash in the wall, but to close it only from one stained glass window. On 5 December 2020 the mural dedicated to the victims, created by the artist from Rimini Hero.