A man has been charged after he ‘left his girlfriend to freeze for death’ up a mountain.
The 33-year-old woman had set off on a tour with her partner earlier this year to go up Austria’s highest mountain, the 12,460 foot Grossglockner.
But it’s reported that when she was unable to continue with the climb, he allegedly left her alone to get help. However, due to the extreme conditions of the winter weather, the woman from Salzburg tragically died when she was ‘unprotected’ and ‘froze to death’.
An investigation into her death has now been completed and her experienced climber boyfriend has now been charged with manslaughter by gross negligence. It is said he is facing up to three years in prison for her death.
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A statement from the public prosector’s office on this case reads: “At approximately 2am, the defendant left his girlfriend unprotected, exhausted, hypothermic, and disoriented about 50 meters below the summit cross of the Großglockner.
“The woman froze to death. Since the defendant, unlike his girlfriend, was already very experienced with alpine high-altitude tours and had planned the tour, he was to be considered the responsible guide of the tour.”
The man has been accused of several errors after prosecutors obtained the likes of forensic reports and evaluated phones, sports watches, image and videos as well as getting an assessment from an alpine technical expert.
It is accused that he didn’t take his girlfriend’s lack of experience into account, given she had never done a tour of a high-altitude such as Grossglockner of this length before.
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It’s reported that she was struggling and unable to carry on with the climb when they were 165ft from the summit on 19 January, Heute reports.
He is also accused of starting the two approximately two hours too late as part of the planning and was not carrying sufficient emergency bivouac equipment.
It is also alleged that he allowed his partner to use unsuitable equipment for a high-alpine tour in mixed terrain.
Moreover, he is accused of failing to make an emergency call in time before nightfall, not turning back in time (given the harsh weather conditions) and not making distress signals when a police helicopter flew over.
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Primarily, he is accused of failing to move his girlfriend to a sheltered space to protect her from heat loss or providing for her in this way.
Despite attempts from Alpine Police to contact him and the helicopter flying over at 10:50pm, he did not notify rescue services until 3:30am. But the helicopter rescue could not be carried out at dawn and when rescuers reached the woman just after 10am, she was found dead.
His trial is set to take place in February as his defence attorney ‘still assumes it was a tragic, fateful accident’. He added to the KUIER: “My client is very sorry about how things turned out.”
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Jess Battison