Four were seated in the front, five in the back, on the Defender that crashed Tuesday night for over 100 meters in an escarpment in Castelmagno. How it ended up straight in that cursed left-hand bend in the road that leads from the Sanctuary of San Magno to the Alpe Chastlar hut remains a mystery that the Cuneo police are trying to clarify. From the first, dramatic stories of Anna and Chiara, the seventeen-year-old survivors of the crash, it seems that Marco Appendino, 24, from Savigliano, driving the off-road vehicle, was proceeding with caution. That afternoon a thunderstorm had hit the area and the road, in that dirt spot, was still wet. Certainly the boys had not been drinking, they were not “playing” in the cockpit, nor were they disturbing the young man behind the wheel.
Five deaths in a few moments: from the hairpin bend to the bottom of the valley, the Defender’s path crashed in Castelmagno
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“We were going very slowly” the girls reiterated to the investigators, still in shock, assisted by a psychologist from the ASL Cn1, and then added that “the car took a left-hander too wide and slipped down, as if it were ice”.
Accident in the Cuneo area, reconstruction and the place where the car went off-road
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In a few moments the crash and all the young people were thrown out of the cockpit, even tens of meters from each other. In addition to Marco Appendino, the brothers Elia and Nicolò Martini, 14 and 17, from Fossano, Camilla Bessone (15) and Samuele Gribaudo (14), from Cuneo, lost their lives instantly. Wounded and already discharged on Wednesday Chiara (lives in Morozzo) and Anna (Samuele’s sister), while Marco M. (24, also from Savigliano) and Danilo (17, from Verzuolo) are hospitalized in serious condition, the first to the Cto di Turin, the second at the “Santa Croce” in Cuneo (today the prognosis will be dissolved, they would not be in danger of life).
After dinner, they had decided to go up to the Sanctuary of San Magno to see the falling stars of San Lorenzo. They started in two different cars: nine on the Defender (homologated for 6 seats) other friends (also brothers and cousins) on a second car. The latter stopped at the church, while the other nine continued on the road to the grange Tibert and Alpe Chastlar, where the Martini family has a hut for the summer season.
Accident in Castelmagno, the fatal fall straight down the bend shown by our correspondent
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«We stayed for a while, we took a walk, then we got back on the Defender to go home» said Anna and Chiara. On the jeep, next to Hangers on the front seats, Marco M. and the two girls (Chiara towards the window); behind sat the brothers Elia and Nicolò, Camilla and Samuele, and Danilo near the rear door.
It was just over a kilometer to get to the Sanctuary and find the other friends. Then that curve to the left “and we went down.”
