The SUV Lamborghini driven by 20-year-old Youtuber Matteo Di Pietro was travelling at over 124 km/h immediately before impact with the Smart car, an arrest warrant said Monday. The crash caused the death of a five-year-old child in Rome last week.
The warrant ordered Di Pietro, who is suspected of playing a YouTube challenge with the other four occupants of the SUV at the time of the crash, to be placed under house arrest for aggravated vehicular homicide and lesions in injuring the little boy’s mother and sister.
A judge who signed an arrest warrant for the accused said the young man’s friends had asked him to slow down before the fatal impact.
YouTuber rented Lamborghini solely to increase ad revenue
The accused, 20-year-old Matteo Di Pietro, “rented the Lamborghini SUV with the sole and obvious purpose of impressing and capturing the attention of young web visitors in order to increase advertising revenue, to the detriment of safety and responsibility, and consequently to proceed at a speed above the indicated limits,” said the preliminary investigations judge (GIP) in his warrant for Di Pietro’s house arrest on charges of vehicular homicide.
“All the more so since some of the passengers inside the Lamborghini had repeatedly urged them to reduce speed,” said the GIP about the accident at Casal Palocco, a southern Roman suburb.
The victim has been named by his first name only, Manuel.
