"The young worker was killed, the skull injuries are not compatible with the accident at work, it was a violent and voluntary action by unknown persons".
The experts investigating the death, on 13 March 2014, of a 24-year-old worker from Dorgali, Antonello Mereu, in a marble quarry in Orosei , confirm what L'Unione Sarda anticipated in recent days : it was not an accident at work, but a homicide.
The thesis of the experts appointed by judge Alessandra Ponti - the doctor Rita Celli and the engineer Stefano Ferrigno - was illustrated today in the courtroom of Nuoro.
According to prosecutor Francesca Pala, who had entered in the register of suspects, the owner of the company Giovanni Mele and the employees Sergio Floris and Ignazio Masala violated the safety regulations on construction sites.
Now, eight years after the events, another truth emerges. For the consultants appointed by the judge, in fact, it was not the rod flown while Mereu was cutting the marble blocks with a diamond wire that hit him in the skull and killed him, but an attack with a sharp object, "an awl or a screwdriver" .
According to this hypothesis, the young man would have been surprised by his killer from behind, and would not have heard him coming due to the loud noise of the machine he was using.
The defense of the defendants agree on the result of the experts, but not the prosecutor nor the lawyer who protects Mereu's family, Pietro Salis.
«The appraisal - explains the civil party lawyer - took place on the basis of the probative material deposited and the photos collected during the autopsy by the coroner Vindice Mingioni, who had spoken of the compatibility of the wound with the rod even if he had not excluded the criminal hypothesis. We are perplexed about the hypothesis of aggression which clashes with the evidence acquired: the last colleague who sees Antonello around 7 in the morning finds him a few minutes later lying on the ground in a pool of blood and we know that the quarry cannot be entered or enter at will. This is why we insist on the accident at work: Antonello was the youngest worker and was left alone without having had specific training to use those machines».
The battle over the expert reports has just begun: next hearing on May 25th.
(Unioneonline/lf)
