Psychiatrist killed by patient with 57 stab wounds, the judges: "Avoidable murder, safety was underestimated"
The killer is serving 30 years in prison but the former director general of the ASL in which the tragedy took place was also sentenced
In the ASL where Paola Labriola worked, the psychiatrist from Bari killed by a patient with 57 stab wounds on 4 October 2013, "the risk of attacks on staff was underestimated".
This was written by the judges of the court of Bari motivating the sentence with which in April the former director of the ASL of Bari Domenico Colasanto was sentenced to 3 and a half years of imprisonment. The charges are manslaughter aggravated by the violation of the rules for the prevention of accidents at work and the omission of official acts. According to the judges, Colasanto would not have guaranteed safety in the mental health center in via Tenente Casale, in the Libertà district of Bari, also due to an "economic setting of the health functions bent to the needs of the budget".
Another defendant, the former ASL official Alberto Gallo, was also sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment, believed to be the author of the false risk assessment document of the structure, compiled after the murder and backdated "to cover his shortcomings" and "divert the investigation". As for the material perpetrator of the crime, the 41-year-old Vincenzo Poliseno, is serving a final sentence of 30 years in prison.
"UNDERVALUED SAFETY" - "The underestimation of the issue of safety in the workplace and the vision of the economic criterion as the main guide of the action of the ASL leaders - reads the reasons for the sentence - determined Colasanto's choices not to draft the document risk assessment of mental health centers and not to adopt adequate preventive measures, thus creating the conditions for leaving the CSM in via Casale without adequate security safeguards, where the barbaric murder of Dr. Labriola took place, who exercised her work with self-denial in a high security risk CSM ".
According to the judges, "there was an underestimation of the risk of attacks on personnel, both for adherence to Basaglian theories opposed to the militarization of the CSM, and for the economic planning of the health functions, bent to the needs of the budget, which denotes the main concern of many public health managers, namely the balance of the budget, rather than the protection of the health and safety of workers ".
"AVOIDABLE MURDER" - The murder "was foreseeable and avoidable by adopting the remedies and precautions provided by the law", say the judges. In essence it was a "sadly announced crime".
"The homicidal event - it is still written in the conviction of Colasanto - was favored by the conditions of total insecurity in which the structure had been living for some time". "The victim had no possibility of escape, there were no sound alarm devices in the room, the staff were all female, the video intercom at the entrance was not working, the entrance door could be opened from the outside with a simple push".
"Despite being aware of the dangerous situation and the episodes of aggression and threats suffered by the staff of the center", Colasanto "consciously failed to adopt the appropriate measures to guarantee safety". "His fault - according to the judges - consists in not having set up an adequate security service, vainly requested following the occurrence of episodes of threats and attacks on the health care personnel of that CSM". Furthermore, the judges did not grant generic extenuating circumstances to the former chief executive officer for "the procedural attitude expressed by Colasanto, who did not intend to apologize for the victims' families, or offer any compensation, even if symbolic".
(Unioneonline / D)
