Disabled daughter dead, mother accused of voluntary homicide

The judge of the Court of Vicenza Ettore Tisato deemed admissible the prosecutor's request to reclassify the crime from manslaughter to voluntary manslaughter against the mother of Beatrice Berti, a 14-year-old disabled woman who died in 2021 due to respiratory failure. The woman, Valentina Pasini, 43, was in fact on trial for manslaughter, but in the penultimate hearing the public prosecutor had asked, in a twist, for the crime to be reclassified. A request that the woman's lawyer, Dario Lunardon, opposed.

The little girl had suffered from Dejerine-Sottas syndrome since birth and was not self-sufficient, and for this reason she had to resort to mechanical ventilation at home 24 hours a day. The prosecutor's office had opened the case after a report from the pediatric hospice in Padua, where the minor had been under treatment for some time. The day before her death, in fact, she had been taken to a clinic following an episode of loss of consciousness due to acute hypoxia, where the healthcare staff recommended hospitalization, which her mother refused. Once home, the woman would not have connected her daughter's respirator to the electricity to recharge the batteries. Now the documents return to the Prosecutor's Office and we will move on to a new preliminary hearing: in the case of an indictment for voluntary homicide, the trial would open before the Court of Assizes