The Carabinieri police officer who
was driving the car involved in the fatal Milan chase of a
19-year-old Egyptian-Italian man who jumped a control point on
the back of a scooter driven by a 22 year-old Tunisian friend
behaved in a correct manner, according to a forensic analysis
provided by an expert appointed by the State Attorney's office
in Italy's financial capital.
The document was filed on Wednesday. The Carabinieri officer,
charged of vehicular homicide together with the scooter's driver
Fares Bouzidi, hit the breaks when he was supposed to and did
not ram into the scooter at the end of the chase but hit it
while the chase was still ongoing, according to the analysis
provided by the expert.
The expert's paper attributed responsibility to the scooter's
driver for the accident that led to Ramy Elgaml's death. A video
of the accident that took place on November 24 last year probed
by investigators appeared to show the lead patrol car drive into
the scooter at the end of the eight-kilometre chase across
downtown Milan, which reportedly started when Elgaml decided to
jump the checkpoint because he didn't have a valid license.
The video also appeared to show officers approaching a witness
and possibly intimating to him that he should erase evidence of
the fatal crash, as he had maintained.
The incident sparked several days of unrest in the high-crime
former working class Corvetto district where the young man
lived, in which several police were hurt, and nationwide
protests. However, the expert witness wrote in his analysis that
"it is possible to state that the responsibility for the fatal
accident must be attributed to the driver of the Yamaha scooter,
Bouzidi Fares, over his reckless and dangerous conduct".
According to the paper filed by the consultant appointed by
Milan prosecutors investigating Elgaml's death, Fares repeatedly
violated traffic laws.
After refusing to stop at a Carabinieri control point, Fares
"started a freak and very tense chase at an extremely high
speed", driving "in a reckless and extremely dangerous way",
"dismissing danger" and "taking the risk of the consequences",
according to the expert.
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