Toronto, May 27: Italian police on Wednesday said that they have arrested three people in an investigation into a cable car, known as “Gondola” crash in the Piedmont Mountains that left 14 people dead (in the pic by italian Vigili del Fuoco).
These three people, all involved in management of the cable car, have been accused of deliberately deactivating the emergency brake that could have stopped it slamming into the side of the mountain when the cable snapped on Sunday afternoon. These arrestees are: Luigi Nerini, the owner of the Ferrovie del Mottarone cable car company, will be remanded in custody at a prison in the city of Verbania for 48 hours, police said. Director Enrico Perocchio and Gabriele Tadini, an engineer at the company, will also be held, they added. Police believe the men “blocked the safety brakes,” said the commander in charge of the investigation. They also believe the men knew that a safety brake system in the cable car was disabled.
“The public prosecutor’s office has ordered three arrests for removal or omission of precautions against accidents at work,” a spokesman for the carabinieri police told.
Of the 15 people travelling in the cable car at Mottarone, a scenic location overlooking Lake Maggiore in the northwest region of Piedmont, 14 were killed. A five-year-old boy who is currently in a critical condition was the only survivor. A nine-year-old boy was also among the victims.
It has been learnt that, these three suspects accused of deliberately deactivating the brake that could have stopped the car flying backwards when the cable snapped, to avoid delays following a malfunction.
The prosecutor Limpia Bossi told reporters that, “It was a conscious choice, absolutely conscious. That’s it. It was not an occasional omission or forgetfulness. It was a conscious decision to disarm… to deactivate this emergency system in order to remedy what we have been told were problems, technical problems that were occurring on the line.”
The gondola came down Sunday as it was making the 20-minute journey from Stresa, a small town on the banks of Lake Maggiore around 55 miles north of Milan, to the summit of the Mottarone mountain in the Alps, almost 4,500 feet above sea level. It was nearing the end of its journey when the lead cable snapped. The gondola slipped back at a rapid speed until it pulled off the cable and plunged 60 feet to the ground where it rolled over several times until it was stopped by trees. It was still unclear why the lead cable snapped.
The only 5-year-old survived Israeli boy who was taken to the Regina Margherita Hospital in the city of Turin with fractures to his legs and trauma to his body. He is in stable but critical condition and slowly coming out of a medically induced coma but is not yet conscious, hospital spokesman Paolo Berra updated Wednesday.
