Sean Michieli, wife missing after boating accident in Venetian lagoon, declared brain dead

The medical commission that led the assessment of brain death of Sean Michieli officially declared the death of the young man, who was hospitalized at the Sant'Angelo hospital in Mestre (Venice) after the accident in the lagoon following which his wife Gabriela Querino was missing. We learned this from Ulss 3 sources. A case of nautical homicide has been opened on the accident.

The tragedy of Sean Michieli and Gabriela Querino, married for three months, began shortly before 6am yesterday morning, when the small boat they were traveling on collided with a water taxi off the island of Tessera, a short distance from the airport of the Veneto capital.

No one has any illusions about the epilogue anymore. The investigations to declare the 25-year-old, a fisherman for generations, dead, began this afternoon and concluded in the evening. The searches of the 26-year-old of Brazilian origins, immediately infected by her husband with a passion for this profession, were suspended at sunset.

For several hours yesterday, it was not certain whether both were on board. But Michieli's family said that the two were almost inseparable on the boat and therefore in all likelihood they had also gone out together yesterday, leaving from Burano, where they live, in search of bait. And, when the firefighters fished out the wreck of the small boat on Saturday evening, the carabinieri found some elements that suggested his presence on board. But for now Querino has not been found. The firefighters deployed divers from the regional unit, the helicopter and some jet skis to support the search operations.

And tomorrow the divers and helicopter will be back in action, because so far it hasn't been enough. The waters of the lagoon are muddy, it is difficult to orient yourself even within a few meters, and the alternation of high and low tide further increases the difficulty coefficient of the searches. Last year, a fisherman's boat was found off the coast of Punta Sabbioni and the fruitless search continued for weeks. Meanwhile, the Venice Public Prosecutor's Office is taking action on the incident.

Reconstructing the dynamics of the crash with certainty is not easy, because the only witness was the taxi driver. Before dawn, in the darkness and fog of the Lagoon, no one but him saw anything. And obviously there are no cameras. It is therefore difficult to assign blame and responsibility. The Prosecutor's Office has opened a file and, if Michieli's brain death is declared in the next few hours or Querino's lifeless body is found, the crime hypothesis will become that envisaged by article 589 bis, which regulates road homicide and nautical homicide. For the Michieli family, what is looming in these hours is a second tragedy that occurs in the same waters on which they have earned their food for generations.

In 2007 his uncle Endrius, who was 19 years old, died in a collision between his punt and a barge carrying fuel. The accident occurred a short distance from Fondamente Nove, in front of the cemetery island of San Michele. At that moment a violent storm was underway, accompanied by gusts of wind. Nineteen years later, Sean lies on a hospital bed in desperate conditions and his wife, who never knew him, is missing in the same waters.