Parents are still in shock. Their car has a broken window, what remains of the desperate attempt to save their daughter, probably forgotten in the car in front of the kindergarten where she never arrived. The care of the doctors of 118 was useless, it was too late to save the little girl left in the car right outside the nest.
The tragedy took place in the military citadel of Cecchignola, in the south of Rome, a maze of streets and buildings where hundreds of soldiers live. A city within a city, with its church, its schools, its sports centers, but also barracks and apartment buildings. Here every street bears the name of a military corps, the grenadiers, the engineers, the drivers. In the one dedicated to riflemen there is the Luinetti kindergarten, in front of the General Directorate for Military Personnel. In the large parking lot in front of the entrance, a Red Megane with the window broken.
This morning, according to the first reconstructions of what happened, the father of the child - a carabiniere on duty at the General Staff of Defense - should have accompanied his daughter to the nursery, while the mother should then have taken her back in the afternoon. When the woman arrived, however, the teachers explained that her daughter had never arrived at school. When the woman saw her husband's car with the child inside, she fell ill. A passing soldier decided to break the glass to try to let the newborn breathe, but unfortunately it was useless. The 118 health workers who then intervened on the spot tried to revive her but without success. To alert them, previously, had been a woman who had called 112.
The area was cordoned off and subjected to seizure to allow the findings of the case and clarify exactly what happened. The case is investigated by the carabinieri of the Eur company and the Investigative Unit. According to sources of the prosecutor's office, however, it would be a tragic fatality, thus confirming the hypothesis that the father forgot his daughter on the infant carrier in the back seat. The couple were interviewed by the investigators. And the man is being investigated for child abandonment, a due act.
What happened in Rome is yet another tragedy of the so-called 'Forgotten baby syndrome'. One of the latest cases in Italy dates back to 2019, when in Catania the father of a two-year-old boy left his son in the car for five hours in the sun. Even then, the parent was accompanying the child to daycare. The father remembered the little son left in the car only when his wife called him alarmed, after going to the nursery to pick up the child. The man rushed into the parking lot finding the lifeless child, immediately took him to the emergency room of the Polyclinic, but the doctors even in that case could no longer do anything to revive him. According to expert data, the "Forgotten Child Syndrome" has caused, from 1998 to today in Italy, the death of 11 children. The first case, by a tragic twist of fate, was recorded in Catania. The 'distraction' of a SGS Thompson technician caused the death of his 20-month-old son left in the car for seven hours in the sun, with a temperature of 40 degrees. The man, also an engineer, had gone out with his Punto to accompany his son to kindergarten, curled up in his car seat and forgotten in the car in the parking lot of the multinational. The father of the child in 2000 was sentenced to one year of imprisonment, suspended sentence, for manslaughter.
In 2019, Parliament approved the decree on the obligation of anti-abandonment seats in the car, i.e. equipped with an acoustic alarm to remind the presence of the child in the car. A measure, whose first signatory was Giorgia Meloni, which came into force on November 7, 2019 and which provided for the mandatory nature for children under the age of four. The devices, in addition to visual and audible alarms, can also be connected to parents' smartphones through special apps.
