Heartbreaking first words of boy, 5, who was only survivor of Italian cable car disaster – World News

A five-year-old boy who survived a cable car crash which killed his parents and baby brother asked: “Where are mum and dad?” when he first came round in hospital.

Eitan Biran, from Israel, was the only one to escape alive from the tragedy in the Alps, in which 14 people died.

Among them were his mother Tal, 26, his father Amit, 30, little brother Tom, two, and great grandparents Yitzhak Cohen, 81, and Barbara Koninsky, 71.

Eitan has been in intensive care for most of the week since the accident, but is now breathing independently, although he still finds talking difficult, according to Italian media.

It is unclear whether he has been told the devastating news that his parents, brother and great grandparents are dead, but his aunt Aya, 41, has been by his bedside at the Regine Margherita Children’s Hospital in Turin since he was brought in.

He told her he had a sore throat when he first woke up, before asking where he was and why she was there.

Giovanni La Valle, the hospital’s general manager, told German newspaper BILD: “Sometimes Eitan asks about his parents, but whatever: his aunt is always with him.”

Eitan suffered abdominal and thoracic trauma, along with fractures to his limbs, when the cable crash happened last week, and is still in a critical condition.

His psychologist, Marina Bertolotti, said that at this early stage it was important to tread carefully.

“We don’t ask, but we have to be able to respond to his questions,” she explained. “To find the right answers, we need to work with his family. If he screams, you have to intervene. But otherwise, we have to first see what his psychological trauma is.’

The bodies of his mother, father, younger brother, and his great-grandparents were lined up at the Milan Malpensa airport on Wednesday ahead of their repatriation to Israel.

They were buried the next day in Aviel, while Eitan’s aunt and grandparents stayed with him in the hospital.

The youngster has been sent several gifts from well-wishers while receiving treatment, including a fire helmet from one of the rescuers at the scene with his name on it.

Three families have also offered to adopt him, having contacted the Mayor of Stresa Marcella Severino, who visited him earlier in the week and labelled the crash her town’s 9/11.

“This is September 11 for Stresa,” the mayor said on Wednesday evening as a message from the Pope was relayed by the local priest during a service for the victims.

“The Holy Father thinks with emotion of so many lives tragically broken … and sends his prayers to the victims and for little Eitan,” Father Gianluca Villa told the congregation, which included firefighters, nurses and carabinieri who rushed to the Mottarone mountain in the Alps after the cable car fell.

A total of 14 people died on Sunday when the cable car, which had been transporting passengers from the resort town of Stresa up the Mottarone mountain in the region of Piedmont in northern Italy, came crashing to the ground.

Rescuers found five bodies still inside the car, with the others all outside.

Aside from Eitan’s relatives, the dead also included Alessandro Merlo, 29, his fiance Silvia Malnati, 27; husband Angelo Vito Gasparro, 45, and wife Roberta Pistolato; Vittorio Zorloni, his fiancee Elisabetta Persanini, 38, and the couple’s five-year-old son Mattia; and lovers Serena Cosentino, 27, and Mohammadreza Shahaisavandi, 23.

There were initially two child survivors airlifted to a hospital in Turin, but while Eitan survived the other child, understood to be Mattia, later died.

The first funerals of some of the victims took place in Italy and Israel on Thursday.

Local reports suggested the cable may have failed at around 300m (984ft) from the top of the mountain, fallen about 20m to the ground, then rolled over down the slope before being stopped by trees.

Luigi Nerini, 56, head of Ferrovie del Mottarone, the firm which manages the cable car, was arrested on Wednesday along with his two colleagues Gabriele Tadini and Enrico Perocchio.

They are accused of deactivating the braking system that may have prevented the tragedy and could be facing 30 years in prison.

Nerini is awaiting indictment in a cell at Verbania prison but may face 14 manslaughter counts, which could see him jailed for 30 years, according to BILD.

Tadini, a technician, meanwhile told magistrates on Thursday: “It’s all my fault,” La Republicca reported, explaining that he had deliberately tampered with the brakes to avoid delays after a malfunction.

Investigators however say this deactivation of the brakes – that could have stopped the car flying backwards when the cable snapped – was approved by his senior colleagues Nerini and Perocchio.

The investigators allege that the two managers “had been repeatedly informed and both Perocchio and Nerini endorsed this choice.”

“It was a conscious choice, absolutely conscious. That’s it,” prosecutor Olimpia Bossi told reporters.

“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,” she added.

Despite a maintenance team reportedly coming to fix the technical problems on May 3, they remained unresolved, local Carabinieri police official Alberto Cicognani told Radiotre radio.

“To avoid further interruptions in the service, they chose to leave in ‘the fork’, which prevents the emergency brake from working,” added Cicognani.

Bossi said the fork had been inserted several times, suggesting the cable car had been unsafe for some time.