Maldives: advice from the Busto Arsizio Public Prosecutor’s Office – divers died due to a lack of oxygen
The ball is now in the court of the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is handling the case of manslaughter, and which will have to decide on the next steps.
“Anoxia”, meaning a lack of oxygen; it is believed that they remained in the water beyond the safety limit that their tanks would have guaranteed them. It was the total absence of oxygen that killed the five Italian divers who died on 14 May in a submerged cave on the Vaavu Atoll in the Maldives.
The deaths of the five Italian divers are believed to have been caused by their air tanks running out whilst the group was at a depth of around 60 metres. This was established by the expert report commissioned by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Busto Arsizio, which is investigating the deaths of Monica Montefalcone, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, Muriel Oddenino, Federico Gualtieri and the diving guide Gianluca Benedetti.
In addition to the forensic pathologist Luca Tajana and the toxicologist Cristiana Stramesi, both from the University of Pavia, Luciano Ditri, a specialist in sports and diving medicine, also took part in the consultation.
It is his responsibility to put the findings of the investigations into context, but any definitive conclusion must await comparison with the results of the analyses carried out on the recovered material. For all of them, the cause of death was anoxia, that is, a total lack of oxygen. The divers would have found themselves unable to breathe whilst at a depth of around 60 metres, beyond the time allowed by the air supply in their tanks.
As for the reasons that led them to lose precious minutes, at present, we can only put forward hypotheses.
