Italian ambulance driver suspected of murdering five patients

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN

Rome (CNN) — A 27-year-old ambulance driver is under criminal investigation in the northern Italian city of Forli, on suspicion of murdering at least five elderly people he was transporting by ambulance, a spokesman from the local prosecutor’s office told CNN.

All five patients suffered cardiac arrests, the Forli prosecutor’s office spokesman said. All were elderly and were being treated for serious illnesses, he said, adding that they required non-emergency transportation between their homes or nursing care facilities and hospitals and clinics.

The spokesman said the ambulance service that employed the young man became suspicious after four patients who had been transported in his ambulance died between February and November 2025.

The service, working with the carabinieri police force, then set up a hidden camera and recording devices in the back of the vehicle.

Later that month, a fifth patient, an 85-year-old woman, died while being transported from a cardiac hospital to a rehab center.

She suffered a cardiac arrest during the transport and was pronounced dead while still in the ambulance, a spokesman for the carabinieri told CNN.

Officials conducted an autopsy on the woman, which led to the investigation being handed over to prosecutors, the prosecutor’s office spokesman told CNN.

The ambulance driver, who has not been officially named and who has not been arrested, was part of a two-person team that switched between driving the non-emergency ambulance and administering care to the patients being transported.

He had worked for the ambulance service since 2023, according to his defense attorney, Gloria Parigi.

Parigi said her client has been suspended from the ambulance service.

“He is shocked by what is emerging,” she told local media. “He proclaims his innocence in a matter that has turned his life upside down. He has made himself available to the judicial authorities because he has nothing to hide. This is why he has requested a hearing by the prosecutor’s office.”

All the deaths occurred either during transportation or shortly after, while the suspect was in the back of the ambulance with the patients, according to the carabinieri spokesman.

“The deaths may have occurred by means of poisonous substances or other insidious means,” the prosecutor’s spokesman said, adding that the suspect could be charged with voluntary multiple homicide this week.

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