Italian authorities have identified all 21 people who died in an accident in Mestre near Venice, Corriere della Sera reports. Among them is a Romanian family of four.

The prefect of Venice, Michele di Bari, said that all the victims of the bus accident have been identified.

Among the victims is the Orgrezeanu family, which includes Aurora Maria (8 years old), Georgiana Elena (13 years old), Mihaela Loredan (42 years old) and Mircea Gabriel (45 years old).

9 Ukrainians were also identified, including 30-year-old Lyubov Shishkarova, spouses Iryna Pashenko and Yuliya Nemova, 70-year-old Vasyl Lomakin, 65-year-old Tetyana Beskoraynova, Anastasia, 12-year-old Morozova, Darya Lomakina (10 years old), Dmytro Serov (23 years old) and Serhii Beskorovainov (70 years old).

The tragic accident also killed 3 Germans, including Siddharth’s 28-year-old husband, Jonathan Grass; Anne Elin Berger (22) and Charlotte Nima Fromherz, only one year.

Among the victims are an Italian, a bus driver, 40-year-old Alberto Rizzotto from Treviso, a Croatian Antonela Perkovic (25), two Portuguese: Maria Fernanda Arno Maciel (56) and Gualter Augusto Carvalhodo Maio (54 years old) and South African Annette Pearly Arendse (58 years old). ).

Newlyweds are among the victims

According to the Italian publication, Antonela Perković, a young woman from Croatia, was on her honeymoon with her husband Marko Baković. They became friends about three weeks ago and chose Venice for their honeymoon.

Marko Bakovich was injured and is in the Veneto hospital, in intensive care.

According to the Index newspaper website, the young woman is pregnant. The couple arrived in Venice literally yesterday evening and at 7:30 p.m. boarded the bus that fell off the bridge. They were on their way to Hoo Campsite in Margherita, where the newlyweds were to spend part of their honeymoon in Italy.

Clarification of the IEA regarding the family of Romanians

Four Romanian nationals are among the victims of an accident in Italy in which 21 people died after a bus fell off a bridge in Mestre, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday evening.

According to the MAE, the Embassy of Romania in Rome and the Consulate General of Romania in Trieste made themselves known as an emergency and requested the local authorities as an emergency to provide additional information regarding citizenship, identity and health status. injured persons.

• “Following the measures taken continuously on the night of October 3-4, 2023, as well as during today’s day by the Embassy of Romania in Rome and the Consulate General of Romania in Trieste, the MAE clarifies the fact that among the victims of the road accident there are also four Romanian citizens”, – reports the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It was difficult to identify the deceased

The IAEA emphasizes that the procedure for identifying all victims was difficult, given the circumstances of the accident and its seriousness.

• “At the same time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informs that the mobile consular group of the Consulate General of Romania in Trieste also went to the medical unit where the bodies of the dead were transported to contact family members in order to provide specific consular assistance in such situations.
• The Embassy of Romania in Rome and the Consulate General of Romania in Trieste continue the dialogue with the local authorities and will provide full support within the limits of their powers for the repatriation of the bodies of the deceased and the issuance of death certificates,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. .

The electric car fell from the pedestrian bridge

21 people were killed and 15 injured after a full bus fell from a pedestrian bridge over a railway and caught fire in Mestre, near Venice, on Tuesday night.

The bus was electric, used only for a year. It was occupied by foreign tourists returning from a one-day trip to Venice. While on the pedestrian bridge, he overcame the protective parapets and fell from a height of more than 10 meters over the railway, catching fire on impact.

The accident happened on Tuesday evening, shortly before 20:00 local time (21:00 Romanian), on a straight and usually very busy road that connects the Mestre district with the historic center of Venice.

Researchers’ hypotheses

Italian authorities are investigating the cause of the fall of an electric bus carrying foreign tourists on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

According to Ansa, the judicial authorities are examining two main hypotheses regarding the causes of the tragedy: a risky maneuver involving another bus and old handrails, or the illness of the driver of the car who failed to control the vehicle.

An electric bus broke a handrail and fell from a railway bridge in the Mestre district on Tuesday, falling more than 10 meters into the void.

“We assume that the driver was injured,” Veneto regional president Luca Zaia told Rtl 102.5 radio.

According to him, the testimony of eyewitnesses and recordings of video surveillance cameras can provide additional clues.

However, “the footage (of the accident), which also appeared in the national media, shows the need for a full investigation,” Di Bari said, adding that authorities were working to recover the car’s black box.

The bus was moving slowly before it fell off the bridge

People living nearby said they heard a loud bang and rushed to the scene to try to help.

“There was a woman who spoke English and cried. When I was taking her out, she said, “Take my daughter, take her,” Nigerian-born Godstim Erheneden told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

“She was a small child, I think she was two years old. She was unconscious and I think she was dead. I’m very upset, she’s the same age as my son,” he added.

Checking the number plates showed that the bus was an electric vehicle of a Chinese manufacturer. Firefighters said Wednesday that the remains of the bus were still being examined because of a fire hazard from its batteries.

The head of the company that operated the bus, Massimo Fiorese, told Corriere della Sera that he had seen a video recording of the moments before the accident.

He said it showed the single-decker bus slowing down and appearing “almost stationary” when it hit the guardrail and fell.

“I think the driver was taken because I can’t explain it any other way,” Fiorese said, adding that the driver had started his shift less than two hours before the crash.

Images from the crash site showed that the crossing was equipped with old, relatively thin metal railings, rather than the newer, stronger concrete options.

“There are no signs of braking, no contact with other vehicles,” the head of the Vientiane prosecutor’s office said, according to ANSA.

Witnesses rule out that the broken bus was traveling fast.

The average age of the victims is very low. The list of the dead includes a child only one and a half years old – doctors could not determine the exact age – and a girl 11-12 years old. Two of the dead were 28 years old, another 30 years old.

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