Rebellin death, European arrest warrant ready for the truck driver

The atrocious pain of those who loved Davide Rebellin, and the course of events so that justice is done. On Wednesday, the 51-year-old champion from Veneto, who retired on 16 October at the Veneto Classic after a thirty-year career among the pros, was run over in Montebello Vicentino by Wolfgang Rieke, a 62-year-old German truck driver who later returned to Germany, and died instantly. Yesterday — via Facebook — Françoise Antonini, a Monegasque who had married Rebellin in 2014 and who would arrive in Lonigo (the couple lived on the French Riviera) expressed her feelings: “My angel, my great love. Imagine my life without I am torn by you. The horror of what you have undergone torments me. (…) I’m trying to catch my breath but how can I breathe without you by my side? (…) Please wrap me in your light like this beautiful, so kind, so caring, so loving, so cheerful. Give me the strength to get up and above all rest in peace, that peace you deserve so much. (…) I will always keep you in my heart and in all my being, for eternity”.

Super expertise

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The work of the Vicenza prosecutor’s office – oriented towards requesting a super-expertise on the dynamics of the accident – does not stop. The public prosecutor Lino Giorgio Bruno had written: “The necessary investigations are underway for the exact reconstruction of the dynamics of the accident, for the purposes of further determinations and the initiatives to be taken in relation to the conduct of the perpetrator of the investment” . So the fact that the Public Prosecutor’s Office – the prosecutor in charge of the investigation is Claudia Brunino – can request a European arrest warrant (Mae) seems to be established, taking into consideration the danger of escape and repetition of the crime, given that Rieke, who works for the forwarding company RTR Speditionsgesellschaft mbH owned by his brother in North Rhine-Westphalia, he has already shown that he can escape and has a history of accidents in Italy. In 2014 they had withdrawn his license for driving while intoxicated, in 2001 there had been an extinguished sentence (due to the passage of time after having negotiated with the monocratic judge) before the Court of Foggia for having violated the obligation to stop after an accident in which other people had been involved. The signature of the attorney for the Mae could arrive in these days. Rieke, who could soon be heard (there is also the hypothesis of a videoconference connection), is under investigation for road murder and escape of the driver. The fact that the crime of vehicular homicide does not exist in Germany (but of manslaughter, yes) means that the German authorities cannot arrest Rieke, but this does not exclude the power of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to request a European arrest warrant.

At your place

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The date of the autopsy has not yet been established, nor that of the funeral: in Lonigo there will be city mourning. For the mayor Pier Luigi Giacomello “it is a murder, this driver must be arrested”. It must be said that the prosecutor should serve a “notice” so that the truck driver can appoint a consultant to assist in the autopsy. A procedure that provides for coordination with the German authorities: therefore also for this reason the autopsy examination does not yet have a date.