Italian police said Wednesday that they had arrested three people as part of an investigation into a cable car crash in the mountains, killing 14 people, including five Israelis.
The trio involved in managing the cable car has been accused of deliberately disabling the emergency brakes that may have stopped hitting the sides of Mottarone when the cable broke on Sunday afternoon.
A Carabinieri police spokesman told AFP, “The public prosecutor’s office has ordered the arrest of three people to eliminate or omit precautionary measures against occupational accidents.”
Of the 15 people who traveled by cable car in Mottarone, a scenic location overlooking Lake Maggiore in the northwestern part of Piedmont, 14 died and a 5-year-old boy was hospitalized.
The Italian news agency has named the three suspects Luigi Nerini, who is responsible for the cable car management company Ferrovie del Mottarone, and two other managers, Gabriele Tadini and Enrico Perocchio.
Local Carabinieri police officer Alberto Cicognani told Radiotre’s radio station that the emergency brakes stopped working after the breakdown.
“There was a problem with the cable car, a maintenance team was called in, they didn’t solve the problem, or it was only partial,” he said.
“To avoid further interruptions in service, they chose to leave a’fork’that would prevent emergency braking from working. “
Cicognani claimed that all three men had admitted that it had happened.
In an interview with AFP on Tuesday, local prosecutor Olympia Bossi explained what happened on Sunday before his arrest.
“The cable was clearly broken, it was the main cable,” she said.
“The braking system did not work. It is a system that blocks the cabin with load-bearing cables. This is a system that works in an emergency and should work in an emergency in the event of an accident such as a broken cable. “
“No one could have imagined that going out on Sunday turned into a nightmare and ended tragically,” she added.