The owners of two companies and the engineer responsible for a construction site in Italy are on trial for negligent homicide after a Romanian worker was electrocuted to death

Vasile Băican, a 57-year-old Romanian worker, was electrocuted to death on September 15, 2022, while working on the renovation of a home in Arcore, in Italy’s Monza and Brianza province. More than four years after the accident, the trial for involuntary manslaughter is continuing at the Monza Tribunal.

The alarm was raised at around 1:00 p.m. at a construction site on Trento e Trieste Street, where work was being carried out on the roof and façade of a house. Băican was found unconscious on the scaffolding. Local police officers, doctors, firefighters, and medical crews tried to resuscitate him, but the worker died at the hospital in Vimercate.

Initially, the authorities assumed that he had fallen ill. The autopsy, however, established that the man had been electrocuted. The prosecutor claims that a powerful electric shock caused him to lose consciousness and suffer cardiac arrest.

The trial began on June 9, 2025. In the defendants’ box are the owners of the two companies carrying out the work and the engineer responsible for the construction site. The court rejected the defense’s requests to annul certain documents and to bring the insurers into the case as parties civilly liable. The victim’s brothers joined the proceedings as civil parties, but as of November 9, 2026, they had not received compensation.