PRATO - A technical consultant for Prato’s public prosecutor’s office has declared that the security systems on the weaving machine that killed a 22 year old were manipulated, according to prosecution sources.

  This was discovered on Thursday after an examination of an identical machine from the factory, conducted as part of an investigation into the death of Luana D’Orazio, crushed to death while working in a textile factory on May 3.

  After the tragic incident investigators sequestered two industrial weaving machines from the factory in Oste di Montemurlo, the one into which she was pulled, and one next to it, in order to make a comparison between the two. The investigators, with the help of the technical consultant, will now begin an examination of the guilty machine.

  The owner of the company that makes the warping machines in question, Luana Coppini, and the machinery maintenance worker, Mario Cusimano are both also under investigation for manslaughter and the “removal or intentional omission of precautions against accidents at work.”

  According to official sources, the preliminary hypothesis is that D’Orazio was crushed by the device because a protective grid had previously been removed. 

  It has also been revealed in the last few days, according to La Repubblica, that she was only employed as an apprentice, and her contract detailed - in terms of the warping machines in question -  only a cataloguing role, not allowing her to be directly operational. The investigation is still aiming to ascertain her role at the factory, where she had only been working for a year, and what orders she had been given in relation to the machines.

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