Man left his girlfriend to freeze to death

[Trevordidit]

Man left his girlfriend to freeze when she was struggling on a mountain hike.

He's been found guilty of manslaughter.

So many aspects of his account don't make sense - AIBU to wonder if he did it on purpose?

News article

I think the sentence of a 5 month suspended suggests you are wrong.

no one in the court who actually heard everything thought he was intentional. More that he didn’t take responsibility as the more experienced climber

The judge on this case is experienced with alpine cases and mentioned something about the woman having slipped while being roped as she also had a lip and hand injury.

Despite all this he never took her heavy backpack or took any care to shelter her.

The article below can be translated into English on smartphones:

https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article6995b9fb465c8ddf9405e62e/prozess-im-grossglockner-drama-bergsteiger-laesst-freundin-am-berg-zurueck-sie-erfriert-zusammengekauert-wie-ein-kind-im-schlaf.html

Because you were not in court hearing all the evidence but instead turned judgments and conclusions from bits you’ve picked up off random articles and forums

Re Touching the Void - Simon made an absolutely heroic effort to rescue Joe, he lowered him all the way down that mountain until he unfortunately got lowered into a crevasse. There was literally nothing else Simon could do at that stage, they were both trapped, yet it took him hours to get to the point where he cut the actual rope.
A hero and a decent man, a very far cry from this Austrian guy.

"I’m not ignoring it but there was no arrest made in connection to it.

There are also countless testaments from people including the deceased own mother, who claim he would never harm her and this was a pure accident and he is not at fault - so why are you ignoring all of those testimonies?
Surely the opinion of the mother of the deceased carries quite a lot of weight.

I personally am not focusing on the testimonies or the emotional behind it and focusing more on just the facts and evidence provided." @Tacohill

The evidence suggests that he was guilty of gross negligence regarding her death. And the judge agreed.

It's perfectly reasonable to discuss misogyny in this harrowing death. It's perfectly reasonable to discuss the testimony of a previous girlfriend who suffered a similar experience with the guilty man, Thomas P.

I hope that he doesn't repeat this in three years time and that mountaineers ostracise him. His actions clearly led to Kerstin G's untimely death. I would never climb with him.

I agree that his priority was to reach the summit. I bet he was so hyper focused on his wants that her needs were ignored. Bastard.

I never said he didn’t have any battery on his phone…..
I said the courts acknowledged that his phone was running out of battery…

He phoned the police/rescue 2 hours before he even left her.
He rang at around 12am and then left her at 2am.

He waited for 2 hours with her and then decided to go and find help from the shelter.

There was no question as to why he left her, most people would have done the same as she had exhaustion.
He was not seen as wrong for leaving her.

The questions come from why he didn’t cover her up with a blanket and why he didn’t answer the calls back (although he claims his phone was on airplane mode).
There was also the question as to why neither of them rang earlier, turned back around sooner, left it for another night (as they were 2hours behind schedule) or signalled to the police helicopter.

There is no clear indication of him doing anything intentionally wrong.
He was caught in extreme conditions and was likely suffering from exhaustion and the beginnings of hypothermia too and so it’s obvious that he is not going to think as clearly as we all are sitting in our warm homes.

The sentence was correct because although he should have made better choices, nothing suggests that he intentionally made bad choices.

As the poster to whom you are replying said, it was quicker to reach the summit and go down the other side. Going back the way they had come would have been much slower and more dangerous, and could have left both of them dead. Strange that, in your world, taking the fastest route to get help means he was ignoring her needs.

It’s too dangerous to climb down that way.

It is safer to go up and around apparently.

There was also a shelter close by that he was aiming for to try and get help.

Surely the opinion of the mother of the deceased carries quite a lot of weight.

It doesn't carry much weight with me when it's in contradiction with the verifiable facts.

I love my DM dearly and she is otherwise an intelligent woman, but when I was discussing a domestic violence case with her a few weeks ago, she claimed that a lot of women provoke it.

I'm not confident I'd want her opinion carrying a lot of weight if my bf was on trial for assaulting me.

Which is a completely fair point and why I take all testamonies with a pinch of salt.

The ex could have been angry at him or trying to get her 5 mins of fame etc and so without a police record of it, I am not ignoring it but simply just focusing on the facts rather than personal opinions.

If you take into account the testament of the ex gf, then you also need to take into account the testaments of people who are on his side too.
Or disregard them all.

You can’t just accept the ones that fit a certain narrative.

He's not going to prison.

A dear friend of mine was abused by a former husband for years , her DM supported him till she passed . I would ignore the mothers testimony too

I guess the question is not was she able to do it, but how did he respond when something went very wrong. Did he take all the possible steps to ensure her safety or were opportunities missed.

eg. If you’re in a car crash with someone who is able to drive, and walk off and don’t notify anyone. If they die due to their injuries and you had opportunities you failed to take that could’ve saved their life (like TB had here), you’re partly responsible for their death.

so I’m not sure her competence is necessarily the issue. Courts may have thought otherwise tho, I’m not clear what it focussed on in the end.

In what way is the mother's opinion in contradiction with the verifiable facts? She strongly disagrees with the way her daughter has been characterised by the prosecution, saying she was an experienced mountaineer capable of making her own decisions, having been climbing since 2020, and that she had undertaken harder climbs than this one before. Kerstin G's social media feed appears to confirm this. So where are the verifiable facts that prove the mother is wrong?

His choices don't make sense.
Of course we don't know all the ins and outs of it but we know that he could and should have called rescue services before her condition became critical. And he could and should have wrapped her as warmly as possible and probably stayed whilst waiting for rescue once she was critical.

And even before that it sounds like they should have turned back once things started to go wrong (stuck rope, injured hand, being behind schedule, worsening weather).

And even before that it sounds like they shouldn't have gone at all. Not with her lack of experience of winter tours plus having to do night climbing plus choosing a route where you go up one side and down the other with a "point of no return" before the most challenging and dangerous part of the climb.

The only potential reason I can see to explain his actions is that he himself was delirious from hypothermia. But that doesn't appear to be the case.

The abandoning of a previous woman is showing him in a very bad light. That plus this tragic incident make him sound sociopathic, foolhardy and dangerous.

All he had to do once things got bad was make a phone call. Or wave to a helicopter which was already there!
Or wrap the poor woman in a blanket and bag. May she rest in peace.

Kerstin messaged Thomas weeks earlier to say that she had no experience of winter tours climbing a mountain - the highest in Austria.

Therefore he was the lead climber and responsible for her safety, which he grossly neglected to do and was found guilty of her death by gross negligence.

The judge who passed sentence was an experienced mountaineer.

He sounds like a menace to society. Rather than a derisory jail sentence, since that's all they're willing to imprison him for, I'd rather he had the words WOMEN - AVOID tattooed on his forehead. People like him should come with a public health warning.

The same judge also worked for the mountain rescue but he only gave him a 5 month suspended sentence and said that he did not think he was cold hearted or a murderer, it was a case of misjudgment rather than anything intentional.

I believe without more evidence then this was the correct sentence.

I’m not ignoring it but there was no arrest made in connection to it.

So the testament of a woman as to a man's character carries no weight unless his behaviour reaches the threshold of criminality and he is arrested for it?
Why don't you want to believe what the former GF said?

There are also countless testaments from people
I haven't read that there were any others - only the mother.
Besides which, it is well known that abusive men can charm everyone around them and then carry out the abuse in private. He may not have reached the threshold of "abusive" (whatever that is), but he certainly was selfish and cruel.
There is no contradiction between him being a selfish arsehole in private, and being well-thought-of by others in public.

Surely the opinion of the mother of the deceased carries quite a lot of weight.
Not as to his character - see above.
Depending on her own mountaineering experience, she may or may not be in a position to judge her daughter's abilities.

I personally am not focusing on the testimonies or the emotional behind it and focusing more on just the facts and evidence provided.
This is where you are going wrong, because the situation has to be read in the context of evidence about his character.
Testimony about his character is evidence.

Sounds to me that he deliberately left her.

No. Causing death by gross negligence is not a case of misjudgement.

Let's be clear that the defendant, Thomas P, may well appeal against the sentence of causing death by gross negligence. He pleaded not guilty.

True; I was just thinking that some situations on a mountainside in the dark put both of you at risk of dying, and the choices you make in those circumstances might not be easily explained to someone who wasn't there.

The odd thing is the mother. Even if someone had accidentally killed my child without any negligence or culpability I would still in all likelihood not stick up for them. The whole story is weird! Didn't he do similar with a previous girlfriend too?