Bagheria, a graduation party turns into tragedy: Simona Cinà, twenty years old and a career in the volleyball just started, is found dead in the pool. A night of confusion, versions that do not come back and an expected autopsy as the only hope of truth
A villa overlooking the sea of Mongerbino, a hamlet of Bagheria, in the province of Palermo. A degree party with about ninety guests, music, lights, swimming pool. And a drama that explodes in the middle of the night, leaving only questions and no answer. Simona Cinà, 20 years old, promise of the volleyball grown in Capaci, was found lifeless in a swimming pool six meters for two, with low water, head up, with scratches on the chest and without anyone – at least for several minutes – noticing anything.
The last night of Simona
According to the first reconstructions, Simona’s evening began with the usual grit: an afternoon of training, some story published on Instagram, then the arrival at the party of two volleyball friends in Bagheria. The atmosphere is goliardic, the invitation circulated on WhatsApp promises “rivers of alcohol” and a joke that today sounds like a chilling omen: “If at the end of the evening someone is too drunk and falls into the pool, bring a costume in the car”.
At 3:20, her best friend leaves the villa. At 4, someone calls 118: Simona was found immobile in the water. The first to see her is a boy who, they tell, was collecting plastic glasses. Too late: the health personnel tries the resuscitation, but the girl is already dead.
The detail that torments the family is one: between 3:20 and 4, in a small swimming pool like a living room, surrounded by dozens of boys still wet, nobody notices that a body floats face up.
The shadows in the reconstruction
The carabinieri of Bagheria arrive on the spot, but the scene does not look like that of an alcoholic party: no bottles, no glasses. Only plastic bags with empty water bottles. Yet, in the invitation, the organizers promised to “keep all hydrated”, complete with drinks emojis. “Someone has cleaned up,” denounces the lawyer Gabriele Giambrone, lawyer of the Cinà family.
It is not the only dark point: the villa, although rented for the party, is not initially seized; Simona’s parents discover tragedy only because at 4:50, worried about the delay of her daughter, they call her cell phone. To answer is a boy: “He’s badly, come immediately”. But when they arrive, Simona is already dead, her body lying by the pool.
“There are too many inconsistencies,” repeats Giambrone. “The water was low, did not fall on the face, but it was up to the head. If she had felt bad, someone should have noticed it. And those scratches on the chest? As if it had been dragged or hit. We want the truth.”
The investigations and the DNA
The Palermo prosecutor seized the villa and ordered the autopsy. The carabinieri felt dozens of witnesses and picked up the DNA to a boy, present at the party, after the discovery of traces of blood in the villa. He claims to have injured himself by kicking the shock to the news of Simona’s death.
All the rest remains to be clarified: the exact time of the death, the dynamics of the analysis, the position of the body, any traces of alcohol or substances. Every detail of the scene seems to open a new enigma.
Among the testimonies, contrasting versions emerge: someone claims that the villa had already been partially cleaned up when the carabinieri arrived, others that some bottles of alcohol were still present on the spot. The hours immediately following the drama remain wrapped in confusion: many guests had already left, others were still wet, a sign they had swam just before. It is in this blurred scenario that the investigators are trying to reconstruct what really happened, minute by minute.
A crucial node for the investigators remains the autopsy, which will have to clarify the many points that remained suspended: if Simona has been caught by an illness, if there are traces of substances in the body, or if the dynamics told by those present I do not fight with reality. The first hours after the tragedy have left more shadows than certainties, and the autoptic examination appears today the only tool capable of answering the questions of the family and putting order in a story that does not hold up so far.
The memory of Simona
In Capaci, the country that saw her grow and that gave her her first volleyball network, the news is an open wound. “She was a sunny girl, volleyball was her life,” says Paolo Di Maggio, president of the ACDS Capacense Volley, where Simona had played until last year, before an Erasmus in Spain and a trip to reach her brother. “He taught children, he committed himself to everything he did. We lose a special girl and a talent who could have done a long way.”
The pain of an entire community is intertwined with the anger of a family asking for answers. In Mongerbino, the ribbons of the carabinieri around that villa remain. But the real scene, the one that matters, remained under water, between the minutes of darkness in which no one has seen anything, and too many silences that weigh today as boulders.
