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

Did I see someone say he got into mountai eering from Tiktok videos? That probably helps explaij whyhe was apparently vclueless when things went wrong. No proper trainjng.

That's an interesting and measured take.
Thank you.

While what you say is reasonable it still remains the first prosecution of this kind (i think). There may have been others where the skipper of their own yacht was found negligent but i believe those are where the people on board were merely passenger friends (and didn't even know how to use the radio when the skipper became incapacitated) and thus is a different scenario to the one I was envisaging.

While the verdict in this case seems right, the precedent still concerns me. It seems that (in my skiing scenario) that everyone is responsible under some kind of "joint enterprise". IIRC when someone is attacked all the members of a group are considered culpable even if they actively did nothing.

You are right that I am probably worrying unnecessarily but I am always nervous about scope creep and I feel that personal injury lawyers might make hay on much less tragic incidents...

I wonder whether the disclaimer that i make to my friends actually carries any weight.

Incidentally this is not a hypothetical example. We did lose one member of a group a few years ago, found dead in a ravine, but no prosecution ensued. This was someone who previously had form for just disappearing and not responding to their phone, leaving us searching for them while he skied away, enjoyed himself, and eventually rocked up at the hotel.
In the former case we didn't.inform the pisteurs. In the latter case we did, but only after some hours.

I'm not annoyed.

(Except in the fact that a girl is dead who didn't need to be)

I'm just questioning whether the rules of liability have now been changed and whether I need to factor that in when helping friends enjoy the mountain.

In particular whether there is responsibility on participants to assure themselves that I'm sufficiently competent to be at the front. And whether telling people that I'm not responsible for their safety absolves me of such responsibility.

I gave up allowing people to ride my horse after a ruling that said an inexperienced owner was legally liable for the injuries to a teenager who had actually been the one who tried out the horse for her when she went to buy it. The girl was riding the horse some time after the purchase, but the owner was deemed liable for her ending up in a wheelchair.

If I was a mountain climber in your boots, this judgement would really worry me.

This is the warning sign on the mountain. Very clear. It did indeed take the couple more than three hours to reach that point. Anyway Thomas P was aware the sign existed because he had climbed the mountain several times.

I don't think the rules have changed.
I think at any point if something had happened in your ski group and you were grossly negligent you could have been prosecuted.
I think you should think about what you are doing. Telling people that you are not responsible for their safety does not absolve you from that responsibility.
There is responsibility on the participants' parts to make sure they have the right equipment and that they are fit enough and skilled enough to do the route you take them on but at the same time there's also responsibility on your part to not let people ski if they don't have the right equipment and to choose an appropriate route depending on the skills of the people in the group and to change plans as soon as it becomes clear people can't keep up/aren't skilled enough.
I think you are putting yourself in a precarious position to be honest and you always have been. But I also cannot imagine that you wouldn't call mountain rescue in a situation like Kerstin and Thomas', or that you'd walk off and leave someone without trying to get them warm with an emergency blanket.

I think people (esp blokes??? - not sure) who are drawn to this kind of extreme activity are, errrrmmm, very driven. In a stressful situation on a dark icy mountainside with an injured partner, they may shut down emotional response and obey the natural instinct to keep moving at all costs. I think it's more complicated than prioritising "reaching the summit" and has something to do with the way they are wired up to function.

I'm very familiar with abusive/coercion (having endured it for decades), but I think we should be wary about projecting all sorts of assumptions onto their relationship and what happened between them that night.

https://www.krone.at/4049197

This page can be translated. It's the trial day.

Why take out someone you know has form for such bad behaviour?

Wow, that's grim. Leaving her literally hanging to die. The Die Welt article said they both had smart watches which normally track vitals like heart rate. I wonder why the police didn't seize the smart watches and extrapolate time of death. Does anyone know what happened to the smart watch data?

I agree. And I am actually trying to work out whether @CanSeeClearlyNowTheRainHasGone is being disingenuous for the sake of being argumentative or really is very clueless

You don't sound like you have the requisite knowledge or understanding to be offering to guide people @CanSeeClearlyNowTheRainHasGone

As a minimum you need to understand the laws and your liability in whatever country you are in

And if you arent prepared to be responsible for a group of people then it is quite simple - don't take them out. Uttering some kind of disclaimer (even writing it) won't absolve you of responsibility.

As a equine owner all my life I looked at that case and it attracted alot of headlines that maybe were skewed to fit an agenda. The accident happened when her 3 year old horse was permitted to join a communal leasson and was spooked by another horse. This was a commercial relationship and part of their commercial risk assessment was no horses under 5 should be in a communal leasson without a specific risk assessmenr being done for that horse. They identified that as a risk and ignored it. No criminal liability was ever suggested.
Two other cases you can google around a riding school in Limerick and a hunting accident in 2019 both lost their claims based on failure of personal responsibility for individual actions. These are civil actions on balance of probability and still lost. Criminal liability is far higher level of responsibility and proof.

The smart watch data was seen in the courtroom. Apparently it took them almost 9 hours to ascend 91 metres.

Because he was going to ski anyway and we judged that he'd be safer with us than alone.

And he was, because people were back marking the group so would have seen if he'd fallen on the piste.

We hadn't anticipated that he would ski over the edge and become invisible immediately.

Can I ask you where you’d read the hanging bit because I came across an Austrian article where the judge referred to Kerstin as “hanging off the mountain face”. I couldn’t find it again. She had a lip and hand injury that were consistent with rope and impact injury.

Another article said she was found lying curled up in the snow.

Both times it was reported that her partner didn’t reference the right spot where shoe would have been found so he mislead emergency services as well.

So she/they were already struggling even at the beginning of the climb. They reached fruhstuckplatz circa 1300H after starting at around 0645H, it took them twice the time posted on the board to reach it. I wonder why he/she/they didn't call it off then. By that point, she could have turned around and gone down the way they came up and left him to summit the mountain by himself. Why did she wait until around 1700H to make a wrong call to 149 and supposedly text her mother?

(To be clear, my position is that Thomas deserved his conviction of grossly negligent manslaughter. I do not intent to victim blame. The dynamic between the two was weird and no doubt contributed to her eventual death)

I am neither disingenuous nor clueless.

But in any activity there is always someone at the front. Often someone knows the resort and they offer to lead to save everyone endlessly opening maps.

I am genuinely trying to find out what level of offer starts to make you liable. If I say "I'm going this way, follow if you want" does that make me responsible for having assessed all my friends skiing.

You may not comprehend but AIUI this is the first time that someone has been charged purely by virtue of them being the more experienced.

And as it happens I do not offer to guide people. They ask if they can come out with me and i generally dial it down to the standard of the group. It's a fairly common phenomenon going somewhere with someone more experienced. Generally better than making mistakes on your own. I'm just concerned now whether I should say no, which seems awfully churlish.

I think wanting to understand the implications from this case makes me the opposite of clueless.

Found it:

Comment from mountaineering gtoup

Wonder what happened as he tried Kerstin in a sling to the place she was resting but was found hanging 10 metres below this secured position. Absolutely terrifying to imagine how she died.

The fact that he couldn’t tell them where she was also supports the theory that she fell. If he’d have left her to get help as he said - he would have been able to say where he’d left her.

Thomas P. wanted to continue "at all costs" that day and apparently has difficulty empathizing with others and their abilities. Kerstin G. placed herself in Thomas P.'s care and trusted that he would bring her back down safely. Kerstin G. would never have been able to undertake this tour with someone at her low mountaineering level or alone

At best, he is guilty of manslaughter (convicted).

At worst, I do wonder if he intended to kill her. Perhaps waiting until she was dead until leaving for 'help' as by every account, he actively delayed helping her.

You may not comprehend but AIUI this is the first time that someone has been charged purely by virtue of them being the more experienced

That is not the only reason why he was charged and convicted. He failed to turn back when it was obvious they weren't going to be able to make the climb safely and he failed to contact mountain rescue and he left her without making adequate provision for her. There were 9 points listed where he failed.

If the more experienced person had had an accident or become unwell or unable to go on I could imagine the less experienced person also being charged if they did not attempt to contact mountain rescue or to take basic steps such as wrapping the person in an emergency blanket and putting them in a bivvy bag because those things are absolute basics that everyone should know if they are going to do tours like that even if they have little experience.
It wasn't purely because he was more experienced.

This is an excellent sign. Very pragmatic. Very clear.

What a shame.

Yes I agree. Looking at it from a less experienced climber with obvious physical differences, the less experienced climber would ensure warmth and shelter. Crucially they would contact emergency services.

He's either a very careless person, a very selfish person or a murderer.

We will never know what happened at that point of no return because Kerstin froze to death and her testament died with her. We do know that her phone dialed 149, the emergency no is 140.