Three people were arrested overnight on Tuesday in connection with the cable car crash in Italy that killed 14, including five members of an Israeli family.
The Stresa-Mottarone cable car that crashed on Sunday was traveling up the mountain when the cabin fell some 20 meters to the ground and rolled several times down the steep slopes before it was stopped by trees, Marcella Severino, Stresa's mayor said.
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The emergency brakes system that failed causing the cable car crash in northern Italy on Sunday
(Photo: Corriere della Sera)
Nine other people died in the crash, including four couples and a five-year-old child.
The three individuals, including Luigi Nerini, manager of the Mottarone cable car, its engineer and the director of the service carried out a "conscious action," the ANSA news agency quoted the public prosecutor of the Verbania province Olimpia Bossi, as saying overnight.
They face charges of manslaughter, unintentional disaster and removal of instruments intended to prevent injury aggravated by disaster and very serious injury.
Bossi said the safety braking system had been "tampered with" in order to avoid delays of the cable car service.
However, she added, human error was also being investigated.
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Italian officials investigate the site of the cable car crash in northern Italy that killed 14 people including 5 members of an Israeli family
(Photo: AFP)
The bodies of the five members of the Biran family who were killed in the tragedy were to be flown to Israel on Wednesday after a memorial service organized by the local Jewish community in Stresa in northern Italy.
The sole survivor of the crash, five-year old Eitan Biran, whose parents, brother and great grandparents perished in the disaster, is still hospitalized at the Castelli Hospital in the town of Verbania, in critical condition. His aunt Aya, his father's sister, is by his side.
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Parents Amit and Tal Biran and daughter Tomer were killed in the cable car crash in Italy; five-year-old Eitan Biran, who survived the tragedy, is in critical condition
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
His doctors said they have begun easing him out of his induced coma and that a team of psychologists was on hand to treat him when he wakes.
Pope Francis on Tuesday asked to send his prayers to "little Eitan," who had managed to survive the severe accident. He also asked to express his condolences to the families of the victims.
According to a report in the Italian press on Tuesday, the cable car traveled at a speed of 100 km/h (60mph) and plunged from a height of 54 meters (180 feet).
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Flowers and a memorial candle left at the site of the cable car that crashed Sunday, killing 14 people
(Photo: Zeev Avrahami)
According to the local media, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation said that security camera footage shows the cabin of the cable car starting to bounce before sliding backward.
Bossi also noted that the same sky tram got stuck the day before the crash and technicians had to step in.
It was not immediately clear whether the two incidents were connected.
First published: 08:30, 05.26.21