Three 17-year-olds have died after a car driven by a suspected drink-driver carrying nine people crashed into a canal near Milan in the early hours of this morning.
The 19-year-old driver, an Italian citizen, was driving the Audi at dawn when it crashed into the Villoresi canal in Senago, on the outskirts of Milan. Emergency services were called to the scene at around 5.30am, with police and firefighters attending alongside divers who searched the canal for the missing passengers. The driver, who has not been named, reportedly tested positive for alcohol and is being investigated for alleged aggravated vehicular homicide.
Two boys and a girl, all aged 17, died in the crash. The boys were found dead inside the submerged vehicle, while the girl died shortly after being taken to hospital. The remaining passengers, aged between 17 and 19, were all injured but survived. Footage filmed by local media showed a crane slowly lifting the wrecked car from the canal, while a bridge over the waterway remained closed off as police continued working at the scene. Milan’s public prosecutor’s office has ordered autopsies for the three victims.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Matteo Salvini, responded to the tragedy in a social media post. “Three young lives lost, six young people injured. Nine people in the same car ended up in a canal, the driver drunk. Unacceptable,” he wrote. “We can pass all the laws possible to increase road safety (the data from the new Highway Code is encouraging, with over 100 fewer deaths than the previous year), but it’s still not enough. The leading cause of death for young people continues to be road accidents, not illness or drugs. I want to write directly to the kids, students and new drivers, I want to reach them in their homes and meet them in schools. Life is sacred and there is only one. A prayer and a thought for the families and friends of the victims of these tragic hours.”
