Ambo ‘killed patients for funeral home cash’

Police in Sicily have arrested a stretcher bearer suspected of injecting air into the veins of patients to kill them, then collecting €300 in cash from local funeral parlours in a grisly scam allegedly run by the mafia.

Davide Garofalo, 42, who worked on what Italian media have dubbed the ‘‘ambulanza della morte’’, or ambulance of death, faces charges of voluntary homicide over the deaths of at least three people and possibly dozens more.

He is accused by police in Catania of secretly injecting air into the veins of an elderly woman, an elderly man and a 55-year-old man, all of whom were terminally ill and were being taken from hospital to die at home with their families, La Repubblica newspaper reported. The victims died from embolisms.

More than 50 suspicious deaths involving Garofalo and two other stretcher bearers were under investigation, the paper said.

The deaths – all involving patients from the Biancavilla hospital, about 30km from Catania in the east of the island – occurred over a four-year period beginning in 2012. None were originally thought suspicious.

The story came to light last year, when a reformed mafioso turned informant told satirical TV programme Le Iene (The Hyenas) that the victims ‘‘did not die by the hand of God but for someone to earn €300’’.

Garofalo allegedly recommended the funeral parlour to grieving families. He later received a ‘‘gift’’ of €300, supposedly for dressing the bodies for burial.

The informant claimed that mafia bosses ‘‘put the men on the ambulances’’, and that part of the money ‘‘went to the Cosa Nostra’’.