That car ran with the six boys on board, unaware of the fate that awaited them. The Fiat 500 was traveling at least twice the speed permitted on that stretch of Via Nomentana which crosses the Municipality of Fonte Nuova. A technical report will now be needed but the primary analyzes of the two videos acquired by the Carabinieri of the Monterotondo Company, under delegation from the Tivoli Prosecutor’s Office, leave little room for doubt: the speedometer showed at least 100 kilometers per hour compared to the 50 allowed for a town. And this can be seen by mathematically analyzing the seconds of the films and the car that passes only once on the road before crashing into a pole and then into a tree which, turning into a trampoline, then caused it to overturn. However, there is another problem: being able to establish who, of the six boys, was the one who kept his foot on the accelerator.

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THE DRIVER

Five of the travelers died, Valerio Di Paolo, Alessio Guerrieri, Simone Ramazzotti – all from 2001 – and the two 17-year-olds, Flavia Troisi and Giulia Sclavo. The only survivor of the massacre is Leonardo Chiapparelli, 21, hospitalized in intensive care at the Roman polyclinic Sant’Andrea. The boy is in shock, both from the aftermath of the accident and from knowing that he has lost all his friends. “They left me alone,” he vented to doctors and relatives. Nobody has yet asked him anything about that night, the investigators are aware and will certainly wait for his resignation before listening to him. A due and necessary delicacy for the trauma to pass or, at least, to diminish and memories can thus resurface (it is hope). It was assumed, since the Fiat 500 was registered to the mother, that Valerio Di Paolo was driving on Thursday but that may not be the case. The prosecutor of Tivoli himself, Francesco Menditto, says: “We are not sure who was behind the wheel.” It may not have been Valerio and this would confirm what friends and acquaintances tell about him and not his father or mother. As heartfelt parents who have lost a child, it would be natural to expect those “official defenses” that are sometimes pleaded in defiance of reality. “Valerio didn’t drive if he drank and didn’t take people with him if he wasn’t sure,” says Simone N., one of the many guys in that large group from Fonte Nuova who knew Di Paolo but who has no reason to defend him or describe him as it wasn’t just because he died. Then Valerio, after graduating last year from the “June 2” technical institute, had started working in his father’s workshop: with engines and machines he had started to get his hands dirty. And this may certainly not be enough to justify an always possible distraction, where instead it is ascertained that it was he who was driving, perhaps also dictated by the late timetable (the Fiat crashed just before 2.30 in the morning) but it is essential to establish who was driving , similarly to the state of the car.

EXPERTISE ON THE 500

Registered less than ten years ago, on the 500, Mario Troisi, father of Flavia, hypothesized a malfunction, something that could have contributed to the accident because if his daughter was late and whoever was with her «he had raised his elbow, let himself come to pick up, he didn’t go by car with anyone other than those he trusted». The Tivoli prosecutor’s office seized the vehicle and, as the prosecutor always points out, “more than 100 percent will be done to ascertain every aspect”. In the next few days, therefore, appraisals will almost certainly be ordered on the vehicle. Then there are the autopsies anyway: yesterday the task of carrying out the exams (expected for Wednesday at the latest) was conferred at the Sapienza Institute of Forensic Medicine.
At the moment a file has been opened against unknown persons for road homicide. The Prosecutor is keen to reiterate that “if someone were to be in possession of images or information useful for reconstructing the dynamics of the accident, they would have the moral obligation, even before the legal one, to make contact with the carabinieri who are proceeding or with the Prosecutor” .