While the funeral of Roberta Pitzalis, who died of botulism poisoning after eating a sandwich at the Fiesta Latina in Monserrato, took place this morning in Sardinia, autopsies have begun in Calabria on the two people who died of the same cause, poisoned after eating sandwiches with sausage and turnip tops purchased from a food truck in Diamante, in the Cosenza area. The team of consultants selected by the Paola Public Prosecutor's Office have been assigned their duties.
The specialists assigned to the task have been divided into two groups. Part of the team will perform the autopsy in Catanzaro on Tamara D'Acunto, a forty-five-year-old from Diamante, who died on Wednesday, August 6, 2025. In this case, it will first be necessary to arrange for her exhumation in the cemetery of Cirella, a hamlet of Diamante, where she was buried following the funeral held the day after her death. The other experts will instead perform the autopsy on the body of Luigi Di Santo, a fifty-two-year-old from Cercola, in the Naples area . The examination will be carried out at the San Giovanni Hospital in Lagonegro (Potenza). He died near the highway exit in the Lucanian town while driving home.
In Calabria, there have been multiple reports of contaminated food . The team includes specialists from the Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro and the National Reference Center for Botulism at the National Institute of Health. The Paola prosecutor's office, headed by Domenico Fiordalisi, is continuing its investigation, coordinated by Deputy Prosecutor Maria Porcelli, to determine any liability.
Currently, further investigations are awaited into the tests carried out by the ISS, which in recent days confirmed, through laboratory analyses, the diagnosis of botulism in the first three samples taken from patients arriving at the Annunziata hospital in Cosenza .
(Unioneonline)