One year of imprisonment for Sergio Appeddu and 10 months for his wife, Alessandra Gusai , with conditional suspension of the sentence, plus the payment of court costs .
This is the sentence pronounced this morning by the single judge of Nuoro , Giovanni Angelicchio, against the two spouses, she owner and he administrator of the Ulivi di Orosei hotel , accused of manslaughter for the death, on 2 September 2018, of Richard Mulas , the 7-year-old boy who was trapped in the pool drain.
Only his father, Salvatore Mulas, was present at the reading of the verdict among the little boy's family, who burst into tears and then closed himself in his grief without ever speaking.
The prosecutor Riccardo Belfiori had requested a year's imprisonment for both defendants, attributing to them "the responsibility for the maintenance of the pool", having the legal obligation "to avoid, by placing the grate in the drainage outlet which was missing that day, that the pool could be a source of risk for people."
The civil parties with lawyers Francesco Lai and Piera Pittalis supported the prosecutor's requests. The defense, represented by the lawyers Basilio Brodu and Adriana Brundu, had instead fought for acquittal, arguing that "the responsibility for placing the grate was not Appeddu and Gusai but Mathias Wincler, the administrator of the company that co-owns the residence" . The man has already been sentenced to 5 months for manslaughter.
THE FACTS – That morning of 2 September 2018, little Richard was playing by the pool when he decided to dive in to retrieve a ball that had ended up in the water. The mother, an employee of the residence, was not present at the time of the incident because she was busy with her work. The child, after inserting his arm into the vent without a grate, was no longer able to free himself.
