Accident involving a child in the municipal nursery school: filing requested for the mayor of Crema

Stefania Bonaldi, mayor of Crema (Ansa)

• Crema, child gets hurt in the municipal kindergarten: the mayor investigated

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09 December 2021 The Cremona Public Prosecutor's Office has asked to dismiss the position of the mayor of Crema, Stefania Bonaldi, accused of negligent injuries due to the injury to a child in the municipal asylum who pinched his fingers in a door.

The episode dates back to October 16, 2020 and the guarantee notice sent to Bonaldi last summer had sparked debate on the risks that the first citizens run at a judicial level in carrying out their office. Now it will be up to a investigating judge to decide whether to accept the request.

The first citizen of the Lombard city, from the beginning of the story, said she was "serene and confident" about the outcome of the procedure, also because the Anci and the world of politics in general had expressed convinced solidarity and raised a non-issue more unavoidable, after that guarantee notice: "How far can the responsibilities of a mayor go?".

According to the Cremona prosecutors, Vittina Pinto and Davide Rocco, who asked for the dismissal of the charges against the mayor and three other people (including the manager of the cooperative that manages the asylum) "the specific event that took place seems to be concrete of a completely anomalous risk and, in some ways, not easily foreseeable ". Above all, however, "the position of guarantee held by the mayor - they write in the request - does not seem to be able to extend to the protection of children entrusted to asylum, which is managed independently" by a cooperative "solely by virtue of the sole circumstance that the Municipality di Crema was the tenant of the property ".

The mayor, moreover, "was not aware, nor was she required to be, of the concrete organization of the spaces following the subdivision into" bubbles "(due to the covid emergency), nor of the presence of a fire break door in the room used for the exercise of educational activities ". The restaurant had obtained the authorization to operate in 2001, among other things.

Even Anci, with its president, the mayor of Bari, Antonio Decaro, greets "with pleasure" the request for filing: "For all of us, his case had become an example of the abnormal judicial risks that mayors face in the carrying out their ordinary functions ".

The mayor had been registered in the register of suspects after a child had crushed his hand in a fire door while he was at the nursery: the accusation against her was that he had failed to equip the door with suitable devices to avoid automatic closing . In the accident that took place in October last year, the little one crushed two fingers of his hand without, fortunately, suffering any serious injury.

The injury required a three-month treatment period, after which the child returned to school.

"I slept soundly," says the mayor.

"Now I would like my story to become an incentive to move forward and clearly define the responsibilities of the mayors," he says.

Clear rules and precise perimeters which, Bonaldi points out, "are not a criminal shield, but a way to restore dignity to the role of mayor".

"Some of my colleagues have also received 10/12 warranties, many ended up in nothing - he underlines - this is what we must think about, it is not conceivable that, for everything that happens, we must rely on the common sense of the judiciary".