A 4-year-old girl from an Austrian family drowned in the pool of the Hotel Continental in Milano Marittima, in the Ravenna province, on the early afternoon of Saturday, July 18. The child, rushed to the Bufalini hospital in Cesena, died approximately two hours after admission despite resuscitation efforts by emergency medical personnel.

According to an initial reconstruction by the carabinieri, the girl was with her father in the area between the playroom and the pool. The man, aged 56, stepped away, reportedly to go to his room, after asking his daughter to wait for him. At that point the child apparently ended up in the water. The pool was closed to the public during the lunch break and was not supervised by a lifeguard.

The alarm was reportedly raised by two young people who noticed the girl in the water. A doctor present at the facility intervened immediately, but the child showed no vital signs. From surveillance camera footage, investigators estimated that the girl had been in the water for at least 7-8 minutes.

The father was registered as a suspect by the Ravenna prosecutor's office on the hypothesis of abandonment of a minor. The investigation is being conducted by the carabinieri of the Cervia-Milano Marittima company and the investigative unit of Ravenna, under the direction of duty magistrate Angela Scorza. Investigators are also working to determine where the mother and the lifeguard were at the time of the incident.

The tragedy follows another recent case: on Friday, July 17, Alice Ferrari, aged 11, died at the Gaslini hospital in Genoa after her hair became trapped in the suction pump of a pool in Sestri Levante. According to data reported by multiple outlets, pool drowning deaths in Italy since 2022 have exceeded 75 cases. A bill on the safety of public and private pools is currently under discussion in Parliament, pending before the relevant committee.

The mayor of Cervia, Mirko Boschetti, expressed the city's condolences to the family.