Chiavari – Andrea didn’t make it. The 14-year-old boy hospitalized for four days in the intensive care unit of the Gaslini hospital in Genoa, after a canoe accident, died. This was communicated by the management of the pediatric hospital: “The staff who took care of the boy express their great condolences and the Management for the loss of this young life”, reads the press release. Organ harvesting procedures have also been initiated. “Enormous gratitude goes to the family who expressed a strong desire to donate his organs,” underlined the Gaslini hospital.
The conditions of the young student of the Natta-Deambrosis of Sestri Levante they were already desperate last Thursday, when after an articulated rescue he was extracted from the waters of the Entella river in Chiavari, where he was paddling together with other friends from Shock Waves Sports of Sestri and their instructor.
Andrea had lost control of the canoe and the boat, pushed by the current, collided against a log that got caught on the bottom of the river. Following the impact, the canoe folded on itself and capsized, imprisoning the boy.
The instructor who was with him was the first to rescue him and to keep his head above the water while waiting for rescuers. In a few minutes, firefighters, divers, police and carabinieri arrived on the Maddalena bridge. The operations to free the young man from that grip were not simple. In turn, the rescuers had to face the current, immersed in the Entella.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Genoa has opened a file on the incident
The Genoa prosecutor has opened a file for the death of Andrea Demattei, the student from Sestri Levante who last Thursday remained in the icy waters of the Entella river in Chiavari for over an hour during a training session with his classmates and instructors from the club in which he is a member. The public prosecutor Francesco Cardona Albini will order checks in the next few hours to understand if there is any responsibility for what happened. The boy had gone out with four companions for a training section when his canoe slammed into a log carried by the current swollen by the rains of recent days. The boat overturned and broke and Andrea ended up underwater, with his legs wedged between the branches and the wood. To free him, the firefighters arrived with divers who then opened a passage with the chainsaw. The canoe got stuck between a pylon of the Maddalena bridge, which connects Chiavari and Lavagna, and the trunk. The boy’s family, assisted by the lawyer Rachele De Stefanis, pointed against the disorganization of the relief efforts which would have been timely but, according to them, “there would have been no coordination. Perhaps if they had acted differently, Andrea’s conditions would not have been so desperate.” The young man arrived at the pediatric hospital in the Grifo helicopter in cardiac arrest after being revived on the shore for over 30 minutes in front of the astonished eyes of his friends. The instructor tried to help him while help arrived without succeeding and even the firefighters took an hour before freeing the body from the tangle of wood and branches. The prosecutor wants to understand if the canoe was in good condition suitable for navigation in the river and if the training should have been done at sea, also in light of the fact that two days earlier there had been heavy rains and the waters of the Entella had swollen and the current had carried debris.
#Chiavari #14yearold #stuck #Thursday #canoe #bridge #Entella #died