Sara Di Vita, a high school student just 15 years old, and her mother Antonella Di Ielsi, 50 years old, died within a few hours of each other at the Cardarelli hospital after having eaten Christmas Eve dinner.
According to initial reconstructions, the family would have had dinner together and a few hours after the meal, all the family members – father, mother and youngest daughter – began to feel unwell. They went to the Cardarelli emergency room, but according to what emerges they were sent home twice with a diagnosis of simple gastroenteritis. This is an element that pushed the Molise Regional Health Authority to arrange an internal investigation to reconstruct the entire affair and verify the management of patients.
When the symptoms became unbearable – increasingly severe pain and colic – the family returned to hospital in critical conditions. Sara and her father Giovanni were hospitalized in intensive care, her mother in medicine. But there was nothing that could be done for the young student: she died around 10.30pm on Friday evening. After a few hours the second, devastating news arrived: Antonella didn’t make it either.
The investigators’ hypothesis
The doctors in the intensive care unit spoke of a “truly rare” and very rapid clinical evolution. “They started having these symptoms after a meal“, Dr. Vincenzo Cuzzone, head of the department, explained to ANSA:
There was liver failure and then a cascade of events one after another with truly unique rapidity that led to multi-organ failure.
The most accepted hypothesis at the moment is that of fulminant hepatitis caused by the ingestion of something toxic during the holidays, most likely fish or mushrooms. The investigators are trying to reconstruct precisely which foods were consumed, considering that the family would have participated in several meals with other relatives who, however, did not show any symptoms.
The Campobasso Flying Squad seized all the food present in the family home in Pietracatella to subject it to in-depth analysis. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Campobasso has currently opened a case against unknown persons and has ordered an autopsy on the bodies of mother and daughter, which should take place as early as Tuesday to clarify the exact causes of the deaths.
The father transferred to Spallanzani
Giovanni Di Vita, 55 years old, accountant and former mayor of Pietracatella, remains hospitalized but his conditions, although serious, are not critical at the moment. He was transferred to the Spallanzani Institute in Rome for a series of specialist tests aimed at identifying any toxin or agent responsible for the intoxication.
His 20-year-old eldest daughter was also transferred to the capital with him and, fortunately, she would not have attended the Christmas Eve dinner and did not show any symptoms. However, the young woman will remain under observation as a precaution, waiting for the clinical picture to be completely clarified and further risks to be avoided.
A country in shock
“We are shocked, it is a tragedy that leaves us speechless“, the mayor of Pietracatella, Antonio Tommasone, told ANSA. “The country is in disbelief in the face of such a tragedy, I express my condolences and that of the entire community to the family“.
Antonella worked together with her husband in the accounting firm, while Sara attended classical high school and was a promising student. An esteemed and well-known family in the small Molise village, now devastated by an unimaginable loss.
Investigations continue to shed full light on this matter. Only the autopsy and toxicological tests will be able to provide definitive answers as to what caused this tragedy that destroyed two lives and shocked an entire community.
