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Accident site near Rome
Photo: ANSA / AFP
A YouTuber has been sentenced to prison after a fatal traffic accident involving a child in Italy. The 20-year-old Italian who was behind the wheel at the time has to go to prison for four years and four months, as the Ansa news agency reported. In the accident last summer just outside Rome, a luxury SUV and a family's small car collided. A five-year-old boy was killed. A group of young YouTubers were sitting in the SUV.
The incident caused a stir and outrage in Italy. The people in the YouTuber's car borrowed the SUV from Lamborghini to film videos. They drove the SUV through a street in Casal Palocco, southwest of central Rome, at more than 120 kilometers per hour and collided with the family's car. After the collision, the small car was wrecked. The three-year-old sister and the mother of the five-year-old who died were also seriously injured in the accident. They were taken to the hospital.
What also caused horror was that the trip was probably a YouTube challenge in which the Lamborghini SUV was to be driven for several days, as Ansa further reports. Last June, an investigating judge found that the young man "had rented the Lamborghini SUV with the sole and obvious aim of impressing young Internet visitors and attracting their attention." Advertising revenue should have been increased, "to the detriment of security and a sense of responsibility."
The 20-year-old has now been convicted of the Italian crime of road traffic homicide and bodily harm. He was generally granted mitigating circumstances because the court and his defense had previously agreed to a summary trial.
ani/dpa