the most fragile part: read last

Passing the buck: who was supposed to send a doctor

This entry comes last because it is the part in which each institution gives a different version and none has yet been verified. It should be read knowing that this is contested ground, not established fact.

THE REQUEST FOR A DOCTOR — THE CRUX

The officers' version. The service report and their lawyer maintain that the officers, when calling the ambulance service, also asked for a doctor-staffed rapid response car for a person “in psychotic crisis”. According to their lawyer the request was made twice.

The Bologna health authority's version. The recordings of the calls and the documentation held by the ambulance service operations room DO NOT confirm this account. The health authority has stated that there is no record of any request for a doctor.

An intermediate hypothesis in circulation. The request may have been made by the officers to their own police operations room, and may then not have been passed on to the ambulance service in those terms.

THE FACTS, which nobody disputes. The call was classified as a green code, the lowest urgency. A basic ambulance was sent with four Red Cross volunteers, with no doctor and no nurse. The doctor-staffed car was requested only at 12.36, by the Red Cross crew, and arrived at 12.53, when the doctor could do no more than pronounce him dead.

THE PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE has obtained the telephone call in order to establish what was actually asked for and whether the initial medical response was adequate to the crisis reported. Investigators will also examine “how the emergency was communicated and why, upstream, it was decided not to send a team with a doctor or a nurse”.

WHAT REMAINS TO BE ESTABLISHED. Whether a request for a doctor was made and to whom; whether it was passed on to the ambulance service operations room and in what terms; on what information the green code was assigned; and whether the medical response sent was adequate to the situation reported. These inquiries are under way at the Bologna prosecutor's office. Neither version has been verified to date.