Italy cable car fall: Three arrested over fatal accident

Italy cable car fall: Three arrested over fatal accident

Three people have been arrested in Italy over Sunday’s cable car accident that left 14 dead.

Investigators say the emergency brakes had been disabled and the three members of the operating company were aware.

According to a local transport official, the brakes’ failure meant the car was travelling at over 100km per hour (62 mph) when the cable broke.

The car plunged 20m (65ft) into the side of the Mottarone mountain near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy.

Prosecutors are carrying out an investigation into suspected involuntary homicide and negligence over the incident.

The three suspects have been identified as the owner, director and chief of operations of the company that managed the cable car.

“The three detainees had known about the failure of the emergency brake system for weeks,” news agency Efe quoted prosecutor Olimpia Bossi as saying.

One official told Italian TV channel Rai 3 that the suspects had admitted deactivating the emergency brake following “malfunctions in the cable car”, which repair workers had been unable to fix, according to Ansa new agency.

Who were the victims?
Five families were on board the car when it crashed, including two children who died.

On Tuesday, an Italian health official said the sole survivor of the accident, five-year-old Israeli Eitan Biran, had begun waking up from a medically induced coma, although he remains in a critical condition.

According to reports, Eitan was protected from the impact by his father, who died along with the rest of the family in Sunday’s crash.

What happened on Sunday?
Matteo Gasparini, provincial head of Italy’s Alpine rescue service, said earlier this week that the emergency brake had failed to work after a cable snapped.

The cable car then sped backwards and “ended up catapulted out of the support cables”, Mr Gasparini added.

It is believed the car struck a pylon and plummeted to the ground, tumbling down the mountain until it crashed into trees.

Initial reports said the towing cable failed at about 12:30 (10:30 GMT) as the gondola neared the end of its 20-minute journey to the top of the mountain from the resort town of Stresa. Nearby hikers heard a loud hiss before it crashed to the ground.

The cable car service originally opened in 1970 and was closed for maintenance between 2014 and 2016, according to local media reports. It recently reopened following the lifting of coronavirus measures and numbers inside the gondolas were restricted.