He disappeared during last year’s flood in Scaletta Zanclea, near Messina, but his family is still receiving the instalments of a loan to pay the van that he had bought for work. This is what Simona Lenzo, the lawyer of Carmelo Ricciardello’s family’s said. This morning the lawyer went to Maria Rosaria Laganà, vice-prefect of Messina, to explain that “Ricciardello had asked for a loan but he also had an insurance in case of death”.

 

Lenzo also underlined that the “insurance and the investment companies were invited to stop debits through a letter, but did not even answer”. “We know that, according to the law, a person must be missing for at least two years in order to say he is dead, but we haven’t heard from Ricciardello since the day of the tragedy, in which dozens of people died. We are sure that he didn’t voluntarily escape, leaving his family in despair”.

 

Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute