Mother of dead boy 'injured party'

(ANSA) - Ragusa, December 4 - As police forensic specialists carefully searched the home of a young murder victim, the lawyer for his mother defended her Thursday against allegations she mislead the police about events before her child was strangled.
    "The child was brought school, as his mother said he was brought to school," said lawyer Francesco Villardita, representing Veronica Panarello, whose son Loris Stival, 8, was found dead on Sunday dumped in a canal near his town. "She is not being investigated and she is an injured party in a murder investigation," the lawyer said.
    The parents of the child told a Sicilian newspaper that they have endured "lies" and in a published report Thursday demanded "full respect for a family in need".
    Panarello and Dadide Stival, a 29-year-old truck driver who was out of town when his son disappeared, were reported as telling newspaper La Sicilia that they have "full confidence in the judiciary".
    Panarello originally told police she dropped Loris at his school in the town of Santa Croce Camerina, near Ragusa, early Saturday morning, but the school says the boy did not actually show up.
    Surveillance-camera images near the school and near the family apartment suggest that Loris was not in his mother's car that morning, and did not get out of his mom's car in front of the school as his mother told police, investigators in the case said Wednesday. The video footage suggested that the child instead went back home with his mother.
    Informed sources said CCTV footage from cameras along the way between the Stival home and the school show Panarello driving both her children to school at 8 a.m. Saturday. Fifteen minutes later, her car is seen apparently depositing Loris back at the family home and driving off once more. After another 15 minutes, Panarello's car is seen returning home and parking in the garage, which is below the victim's bedroom. Meanwhile, police also searched the home of Orazio Fidone, the hunter who found the child's body. Authorities have said the man is under investigation for the kidnapping and murder but only as a matter of routine.