"My daughter is not crazy, she didn't throw herself off the balcony because of a simple argument: she was beaten and tried to run away to save herself."
Speaking again is Silvano Chessa, father of Claudia, the 18-year-old girl from Arzachena hospitalized since last Thursday after being killed from a balcony on the fourth floor of the H Hotel in Valletta.
Traveling from Sardinia to Malta, where his daughter has been staying since November in a family home that welcomes foreign students learning English, Chessa tells him what his daughter told him, whose health is improving even though she will have to undergo new surgery on her back, due to the fractures she suffered in the fall, fortunately cushioned by a curtain. "I was informed of what had happened last Thursday morning and I managed to reach my daughter on Friday morning on the first available flight from Cagliari," he explains, "but then I had to return to Sardinia due to a bereavement that struck us. Claudia is conscious at this moment and has already been interviewed by the police in Malta. She told us that there are video surveillance cameras right in front of the window from which she threw herself to escape from the boy. She was running away from him, she screamed and asked for help. She was beaten and has the marks all over her body,” says the father, who adds: “She was hit in the face, her hair was pulled and torn out, which is now missing, he bit her and punched her in the chest.”
The young man, AL, 27 years old, from Arzachena, with whom Claudia has been in a relationship for about three years, had joined her in Malta four days ago and was in the hotel in the centre where she had temporarily moved to spend those days.
"Last Wednesday evening," the parent reconstructs, "Claudia told us that they went out and went to a club about fifty meters from the hotel. Here she said she had had an argument with her boyfriend, who had taken drugs, and that she had insisted on going back to the hotel. She didn't like the atmosphere: he didn't take her decision well and started insulting her and hitting her, until once they got to the room he let loose. A couple of days before, she had called her mother to tell her that there had been an argument between them and he had slapped her, immediately apologizing. We were worried."
As soon as he arrives in Malta, Silvano Chessa will speak with local investigators who have already interviewed his daughter in the hours following her hospitalization. The twenty-seven-year-old, also questioned by Maltese investigators, was arrested for 48 hours and then released with a ban on approaching Claudia for three years. He has already returned to Sardinia.
(Online Union)