A medical degree for Lorena, killed by her boyfriend who feared Covid-19

MESSINA. The lecture hall, the commission with robes, the audience, the thesis on “Selective immunodeficiencies: chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis” on the graduate’s table. Finally, the proclamation: Doctor of Medicine and Surgery with a grade of 110 cum laude. Only the candidate wasn’t there. Her boyfriend, obsessed with jealousy and fear that she had transmitted Covid-19 to him, killed her on 31 March in their home in Furci Siculo, in the Messina area. But Lorena Quaranta, 27, was a brilliant student, the profession of doctor was her dream that has always been pursued. And the degree was now one step away. So this morning the University of Messina gave it to her, entrusting the discussion of the thesis to her friend and colleague Vittoria Patorno and delivering the parchment to the girl’s family, who arrived on purpose from Favara, in the Agrigento area, the town where she was born and lived before. to move to Messina to study medicine.

A ceremony in which the emotion was palpable and in which the presence of Lorena was strongly felt, and not only for the large photo with a crown of flowers underneath, displayed in front of the graduation commission table which was chaired by the rector, and co-supervisor of the thesis, Salvatore Cuzzocrea: there was family, friends, colleagues who, like her, had done the pre-graduate internship, teachers and department directors. There were also investigators who investigated his killing and arrested the perpetrator, Antonio De Pace, 28, the boyfriend-murderer, there were the city authorities. “Congratulations Lorena, your memory will remain alive in all of us,” wrote the university on social media.

When she was killed, Lorena had only been living for a few months in the small apartment of Furci Siculo with her boyfriend, who was also a student in Medicine but in a course for professional nurses. Closed at home, like all of Italy, those were the hardest days of the lockdown. During the night between 30 and 31 March there would have been a fight between the two and De Pace strangled the young woman after having first stunned her with a bruised body and then hit her in the abdomen with a knife. Then, still in a state of confusion, the killer called the carabinieri. An ambulance also arrived but there was nothing more to do for Lorena. He was transported to the hospital for a clumsy suicide attempt.

In the interrogation under guarantee he tried to justify himself by saying that they had argued because he was convinced that she had contracted Covid-19 and that he had passed it on to him, he also overshadowed questions of jealousy. Both the victim and the killer were swabs, both negative. It was an absurd and inexplicable crime, which nobody here wants to forget. And the graduation from Lorraine today will be another way to remember her at the dawn of her career as a doctor, at the service of others.

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