Starting today, the results of the autopsy ordered for Julia Ituma, the 18-year-old Italian volleyball player found dead outside an Istanbul hotel after a fall from the sixth floor, are expected. A few hours earlier she had played with her team, Igor Novara, in the quarter-finals of the Champions League against Eczacibasi Istanbul. The girl’s mother and aunt arrived in the Turkish capital yesterday evening. After the results of the autopsy examination, we will evaluate how to proceed to achieve repatriation. It is still to be clarified what happened: the Turkish media speak of a possible suicide in the light of a video, taken by surveillance cameras, which shows the athlete wandering agitatedly in the corridors of the hotel.
Surveillance videos
The Istanbul police, who immediately launched an investigation yesterday, seized Julia Ituma’s cell phone. The video released by the Turkish media was also acquired by the investigators – in which Ituma is seen walking in the corridor, calling, sitting on the floor, then returning to his room before midnight local time – together with those recorded by other cameras in the area of the hotel. One of these, aimed at the facade, confirmed that the girl fell from a height, running over the external tents. According to the Turkish media, the girl’s roommate told the Istanbul police that she hadn’t noticed anything, because she had fallen asleep after talking to Julia in her room.
Who was Julia Ituma
Julia, born to Nigerian parents in Milan, where she was still studying in a high school, was in her first season in Novara after leaving Club Italia, with which she had achieved many successes, including under 20 world gold in 2021, and in 2022 the European one with the Under 19 and again gold at the Youth Olympics. At the behest of Federvolley, a minute’s silence will be observed on all volleyball courts in the matches that will take place until Sunday.
Source-tg24.sky.it