Poonam Bhattal, pictured, slipped out of a chairlift in the resort of
Claviere in the Italian Alps in 2013. The
parents of a teenage girl who died when she fell from a chair lift
during a school ski trip have hit out after the lift operator walked
free from court.
The gifted, straight-A pupil, who was among 30 children on a half-term holiday, plunged around 20ft and landed on rocky ground. She reportedly got up and said she was ‘I’m fine, I’m fine, I promise’ before deteriorating and collapsing 20 minutes later.
It
later emerged the schoolgirl she had suffered internal injuries,
including a laceration to her pulmonary vein, and she suffered a fatal
heart attack.
Last
week the ski lift operator, Jean Marc Luzzu, 52, walked free from court
after he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter at a hearing in
Turin. He
was given a conditional sentence - equivalent of a suspended sentence -
of 16 months while three other men were committed for trial in April
2017.
Last
night Poonam’s parents said Luzzu had clearly not being doing his job
properly and they were disappointed with the sentence. In
a statement her parents Amarjit and Jaswinder said:
‘We have believed all along that someone was at fault and it is a relief to have that confirmed, but then there is sorrow because if he had done his job properly then our daughter would still be alive.‘If someone has died you expect a harsher sentence, but at the end of the day it’s not going to bring Poonam back. We all miss Poonam so much. She used to borrow my phone to take selfies all the time. I would tell her to stop, but now I treasure every picture.’
Kieran
was strangled when the straps of his backpack became entangled as he
tried to get off a chairlift in the ski resort of Chatel in the French
Alps.
At
the time his parents, Cindy, 53 and Nick, both NHS managers, said:
‘Without widespread improvements across the industry we think a similar
tragedy could happen again.’
No comments:
Post a Comment