Five people are under investigation for the death of Maria Antonietta Cutillo, the 16-year-old from Monfalcone, in the province of Avellino, who was electrocuted in the bathtub last May. The girl was on the phone with a friend when her mobile phone, connected to the charger, slipped into the water: the electric discharge spread from the free end of the USB cable and killed her instantly. The rescue efforts were useless.
According to what emerged from the investigations, if the electrical components of that charger had been compliant with standards, Marie Antoinette would not have died. For this reason, five entrepreneurs, four of whom are Chinese nationals, operating in Tuscany and Lombardy, have ended up under investigation on charges of manslaughter, commercial fraud and sale of industrial products with counterfeit brands .
The chief prosecutor of Avellino, Domenico Airoma, requested and obtained from the investigating judge of the Irpinia Court the preventive seizure of several Chinese-made battery chargers found not to comply with community standards and therefore potentially dangerous.
Like the one that Marie Antoinette used : the investigations by the Carabinieri of the Mirabella Eclano Company, who made use of the contribution of the Racis IT Department, found manufacturing defects in one of the internal components of the device.
In particular, the "ceramic disk capacitor" showed "defects attributable to the poor technical quality of the material with which these devices are made". According to Racis, «if the internal capacitor had been built using electrical components with the criteria required by products with the EEC mark, the lethal event would not have occurred».
(Unioneonline/D)
