On Wednesday, a judge announced that eight members of the medical staff will be tried in Argentina for manslaughter with aggravating circumstances at the end of the investigation into the death of soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona in 2020 at the age of 60.
A judge in San Isidro confirmed the trial of these eight, neurologist and family Leopoldo Lucchi and psychiatrist Agostina Kosachev, as the main officials responsible for the health of the first star in the 1986 World Cup when he led Argentina to its second and last world title, and psychotherapist Carlos Dias, medical coordinator Nancy Forlini, nursing coordinator Mariano Perrone, nurses Ricardo Almiron and Diana Madrid, and clinician Pedro Pablo de Spagna.
The prosecution had called for this trial last April, noting deficiencies and negligence in the care of the former star.
No trial date has been set for the staff over Maradona’s death, which prosecutors say was due to “omission” and mistreatment by the Argentine star’s caregivers who put him in a “state of helplessness”, to be left “to his fate” during his “scandalous” hospitalization at his home.
Maradona died at the age of 60 on his medical bed in his residence north of the capital, Buenos Aires, on November 25, 2020, due to a heart and respiratory crisis, as he was recovering from head surgery.
He was suffering from kidney and liver problems, heart failure, nervous deterioration, and alcohol and cocaine addiction.
The Public Prosecution accuses the eight people of negligent homicide, and they face the risk of imprisonment between 8 and 25 years, explaining that they were “heroes of an unprecedented, incomplete and reckless home hospitalization” and committed “a series of improvisations, management errors and shortcomings.”
And a 70-page report indicated in May 2021 that the medical committee in charge of the investigation, at the request of the judiciary regarding the last hours of the Argentine star, determined that Maradona “began to die at least 12 hours before his death,” and he endured “a period of long torment.” After undergoing brain surgery due to a blood clot.
Prosecutors obtained a series of audio messages showing that the medical team was aware that Maradona was using alcohol, psychotropic drugs and marijuana in the last months of his life.
Among the report’s conclusions, the medical council said that the “signs of danger to life” shown by the former Napoli and Barcelona star were ignored, and that his care in his last weeks was “marred by shortcomings and irregularities.”
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