Nicoletta Manconi, the 24-year-old university student from Orgosolo who moved to Cagliari to study Medicine, who arrived on Sunday evening at the emergency room of the Santissima Trinità hospital in the capital with severe stomach pain and vomiting, died following heart failure. This is what was ascertained by the autopsy ordered by the Prosecutor's Office which opened a case for manslaughter, entering the doctor who examined and discharged her a few hours before her death in the register of suspects.
The autopsy
The autopsy examination on the girl's body lasted over five hours. The specialist Matteo Nioi, appointed by the public prosecutor Gaetano Porcu, therefore ascertained that the girl would not have died from peritonitis or fulminant appendicitis, hypotheses that had initially circulated. But to establish whether there are links between the stomach pains and the heart failure that killed her, the prosecutor's consultant will have to work further and wait for the results of the histological tests on the samples taken from the young woman's body.
The investigation
The family asked for light to be shed on the reasons for the young woman's death, turning to the lawyer Herika Dessì. The 24-year-old's mother, also a family doctor in Orgosolo, found out that her daughter was ill and rushed to Cagliari, but she arrived when her daughter's health conditions were already desperate and Nicoletta Manconi was dying. The girl, according to the reconstruction of the investigators, arrived at the emergency room around 6pm on Sunday under yellow code, taken by ambulance: she was vomiting and had severe abdominal pain, apparently in her stomach. After a vein therapy, apparently an IV, the patient was sent home with the diagnosis of gastroenteritis. A few hours later, however, the student became ill again and her conditions worsened, until she was rushed to hospital again: it is not yet clear whether Nicoletta Manconi arrived at Brotzu still alive, but in desperate conditions, or whether she died before the 'I arrive.
The register of suspects
Prosecutor Porcu immediately opened an investigation for manslaughter, entering the doctor on duty at the Santissima Trinità, Doctor Sebastiano Patti, who was responsible for examining the young woman, in the register of suspects. Assisted by the lawyer Stefania Cossu, he did not want to appoint any consultant to participate in the autopsy ordered by the public prosecutor. Different choice from that of the victim's parents who, with the lawyer Herika Dessì, instead appointed the coroner Maria Rita Pittau.
The pain of a community
A community full of pain will welcome the last trip to Orgosolo of the very young Nicoletta Maria Manconi this morning. His death aroused disbelief and dismay among the entire Orgolese population, but also in Nuoro, a city where the family has relatives and many friends. After the autopsy the body was handed over to the family, but the body will only reach the town today where the funeral will take place this morning in the church of San Pietro at 11am. A choice, perhaps like that of leaving the house in Orgosolo closed, to try to process a loss that is still too difficult to understand. In the meantime, the prosecutor's medical examiner will continue his investigations, including through the examination of the medical records seized by the judicial police, so as to understand whether the young woman could have been saved.
Fabio Ledda
Francesco Pinna