A 9-year-old boy died from having his throat slit by his Ukrainian mother in Italy, raising renewed questions about how multiple warnings from those closest to the family failed to prevent the tragedy.

The boy’s mother, 55-year-old Olena Stasiuk, killed her son on Wednesday evening in Muggia, Trieste. She had previously assaulted the child, an episode documented by authorities but ultimately not acted upon with sufficient urgency.

According to reporting from Corriere della Sera, Giovanni had previously suffered severe bruising after his mother strangled him, prompting the boy’s father to warn officials that she posed an ongoing and imminent threat.

“Don’t leave her alone with my son, she’s dangerous,” he reportedly said of his estranged former partner. That warning went unheeded, despite Stasiuk’s longstanding psychiatric difficulties and previous treatment at a mental health clinic in Trieste.

Stasiuk had arrived in Italy well before the war in Ukraine and was described by specialists as a psychiatric patient. After the couple’s separation, the court entrusted Giovanni to his father, allowing the mother only supervised visits in the presence of social workers. However, those safeguards were recently relaxed: The court authorised the 55-year-old to spend several hours alone with the boy. During the same period, Stasiuk continued to threaten her ex-husband, telling him, “If I die, Giovanni will come with me.”

Il Giornale reported how, on Wednesday night, Paolo contacted emergency services when he was unable to reach Stasiuk, who was due to return Giovanni to him at 9 p.m. When police officers and firefighters forced entry to the apartment on Piazza Marconi, they found the child on the bathroom floor with a clean wound to the neck, likely caused by a kitchen knife. Stasiuk was present, reportedly in a state of shock, “dazed, with cuts on her arm.”

The news was communicated to the father, who had already arrived at the scene. Hours later, he called Don Andrea Destradi, parish priest of the Muggia Cathedral, telling him through tears, “She killed him brutally… I’m shocked, I can’t believe it. What do I do now? How can I live without my son?”

Giovanni was a fourth-grade pupil at a Slovenian school in Trieste. “He was a blond boy, passionate about soccer, and everyone loved him,” Father Destradi said. He added that he had repeatedly urged Stasiuk to seek treatment, but “she was convinced she didn’t need it.”

It remains unclear why her specialist treatment was no longer ongoing or why social services determined she was now fit to enjoy unsupervised contact with her son.

The mayor of Muggia stated that she had been followed by municipal social services, though primarily to verify compliance with the court’s orders following the divorce rather than to conduct adequate welfare checks.

Giovanni’s youth soccer team, Muggia 1967, suspended all activities yesterday on Thursday as a mark of respect and remembrance.