Three people were arrested early on Wednesday in connection to the cable car crash near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy on Sunday that killed 14 people, including five Israelis.
The only survivor of the disaster, a five-year-old Israeli boy, regained consciousness on Wednesday after several days of being sedated and intubated in the hospital.
According to prosecutor Olimpia Bassi, the three people – Luigi Nerini, 56, the owner of the company that operated the cable car (which belongs to local authorities); director of service Gabriele Tadini, 63; and engineer Enrico Perocchio, 51 – purposefully decided to deactivate the emergency brakes in order to hide some malfunctioning in the structure which would have prevented it from operating.
“Persuaded that the cable would never break, they decided to take a risk, which unfortunately resulted in a fatal outcome for the 14 people who were on the Mottarone cable car on Sunday,” Bassi said, according to the Italian daily la Repubblica. “The scenario we have reconstructed is grave and disconcerting.”
The accused “have admitted their responsibilities,” according to Col. Alberto Cicognani, regional commander of the Italian Carabinieri police force, the daily paper reported.
The emergency brake is meant to stop a cable car gondola from falling back if the pulling cable breaks. While it is not clear why the 3-cm.-thick cable broke, the mechanism was deactivated.
“According to our investigations, this was motivated by the need to avoid continuous disruptions of the cable car service,” Bassi further said. “Some maintenance work had been carried out, but it had not completely resolved the problems. The system evidently had anomalies and would have needed more substantial maintenance work, which would have kept the cable car closed.”
The bodies of the five Israeli victims will be buried in Israel on Thursday: Amit Biran, 30; his wife, Tal Peleg, 27; their two-year-old son, Tom; and Tal’s parents, Barbara Cohen Konisky, 71, and Itshak Cohen, 82. The other victims included an Iranian national, a five-year-old child and four couples.
The only survivor, Eitan Biran, remains in serious condition at the Regina Margherita Hospital in Turin, but the doctors were able to remove his ventilator for the first time on Wednesday.
According to the physicians, he regained consciousness but was only briefly awake because of the effect of the drugs.
When he opened his eyes, he saw his aunt Aya, a doctor who lives in Italy with her husband and their two daughters, and has not left the child’s side, together with her parents and relatives who came from Israel.
The doctors suspect that Eitan’s father, Amit, embraced him and protected him with his body during the fall and that this is why he survived. They have expressed cautious optimism about his condition.
“The night passed well and confirmed that his condition is stable,” they said on Wednesday morning, according to the Italian daily La Stampa. “Despite his critical condition, we were able to disconnect him from the ventilator. We believe he will wake up in the next few hours. This is the most delicate moment.”