Struck by a sudden illness a few metres from the shore , around nine in the morning, he was immediately assisted by the people next to him under the umbrella and by the lifeguards on duty at the two bathing establishments on the beach of Santa Maria Navarrese, in the corner below the Spanish Tower.

However, attempts to revive him by the two ambulance crews that arrived a few minutes later were unsuccessful . And around ten o'clock, the heart of Fernando "Nando" Snozzi, a 74-year-old Swiss-Italian citizen from Bellinzona, who lives in Tancau, a stone's throw from Santa Maria, stopped.

The incident shocked the many swimmers who had already been on the beach since early morning.

Snozzi is a very well-known artist and was also well-known in the coastal hamlet of Baunei, to which he had long been linked also because of his wife's Sardinian origins.