Mazara worker identified after 7 years dead in Spain

He died in Barcelona, Spain, on March 1, 2017, Giovan Battista Mangiaracina, known as Gianni, born in 1978, from Mazara del Vallo, whose disappearance had been reported by his wife, Vita Burzotta, to the police on March 9 seven years ago. It was his wife who communicated that Spanish investigators, a couple of months ago, transmitted the fingerprint card of the deceased man, without identity, to the hospital in Barcelona following the serious injuries sustained in a fall from scaffolding. The fall presumably occurred on February 17, 2017, a date from which the wife had not heard from her husband.

Now, thanks to the fingerprints (in possession of the Italian police as Mangiaracina had been arrested for drug offenses, although later acquitted), the victim has been identified. Spanish authorities have communicated that the man fell from scaffolding while attempting a theft. A version contested by the family and their lawyer, the Bari lawyer Antonio Maria La Scala: “But how can they say he fell because he was trying to steal? We know he had gone to Spain to work. He was not involved in illicit activities. We are truly perplexed by these statements from Spanish authorities and appalled that it took the Barcelona police seven years to identify the body. And then, if it was a theft attempt, why didn’t they carry out the necessary investigations? They only treat us Italians like this.”