Father Antonio Ruccia pleaded guilty to a suspended sentence of one year in prison. The priest of the San Giovanni Battista church in Bari was on trial for manslaughter after the lifeless body of a newborn baby was found inside the parish's heated crib.
On the morning of January 2, 2025, the baby died of hypothermia , shortly after being abandoned in a heated crib by an unidentified person. The child abandonment investigation was closed in recent months.
Ruccia, through his lawyer, re-submitted the plea bargain before single judge Luna Calzolaro, who ratified it at the hearing. The initial plea bargain request of three months had been rejected by the preliminary hearing judge, who deemed the sentence "inappropriate."
At the trial, scheduled for June 3rd, only Vincenzo Nanocchio , the electrician who in 2014 installed the equipment in the room to support the heated crib, including the alarm system and air conditioning, will be present. According to the prosecution, the crib was not equipped with adequate measures to alert emergency services.
As reported by the technical investigations, the system, which should have placed a call to the parish priest's cell phone and activated the crib's heating once the baby's weight was detected, did not work. Furthermore, it was determined that the air conditioning in the room was only producing cold air.
(Unioneonline/ns)