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

This is the similar to the case of girl who died in the Thames when a boat she was steering hit a submerged log.

I do think different judgements are being made depending on whether the victims are male or female, with an assumption that a less experienced female with a more experienced male is incapable of taking responsibility for her own safety.

If women want true equality we have to take responsibility for putting common sense aside and following a charismatic man, or for simply making a mistake about our own abilities.

We'll never know what happened here. She may have been determined to prove something to him. He may have been pissed off that she was holding him back (people who engage in dangerous sports are driven personalities, after all). His experience with a previous girlfriend was that he left her and she got back fine.

It seems very far fetched to suggest this was a murder plot rather than just an arrogant disregard for her safety. It would have been easier just to push her off the mountain.

I think the penalty was about right for the situation.

There is nothing confusing about it, when you read the facts it’s pretty clear that he left her to die. He had more than one opportunity to turn back or call emergency services quicker and he even ignored their call back to him (!!!). I think he even got angry that she called? Not to mention that he was really experienced mountain hiker and let her go in inappropriate clothes and equipment.

It was very clear in the days right after the event. What’s amazing is that they went through the process so quickly. Here in the UK it would take 3 years to go through the courts

All the posters commenting on hypothermia making you do strange things (hence why she was found upside down, had taken off her gloves and undid her boots) then why did he leave her exposed and in a position she could have an accident and end up upside down? What is the defence here?
as someone else said, doesn’t it make more sense that he left her in this precarious position and that is why it wasn’t practical/possible to use a blanket or tent?
it says somewhere he tied her down- wonder whether there was evidence of this.
I can’t get past the fact he left an ex girlfriend in similar conditions 2 years prior, after a row that she was going too slowly.

I suspect he had taken her phone as there was the strange text message to her parents saying they were safely back when they were still on the ascent.

A message many women would send to a fretting mother to stop them worrying and losing sleep.

But why was she wearing snowboarding boots if she was such an experienced mountaineer? I mean, I’m not experienced at all (just hill climbing in the Lakes or Snowdon in the past) and even someone like me knows that snowboarding boots wouldn’t be appropriate footwear for mountaineering.

That makes it sound more like coercive control to me, I have to say.

This, exactly.

I'm not sure what you've read because she was not inexperienced and her own family are siding with the boyfriend. She was less experienced than him, yes

I don't think this can easily be chalked up to femicide.

Im not surprised her mom is defending him. One. She’s grieving.
Two. Sociopaths and narcissists know very well how to appear amazing to family members and friends of a victim they abuse so that noone would ever believe the victim…

The number of vile ‘this has given me an idea LOL’ type messages from men on articles about this confirms to me how it is absolutely possible that he put his ambition before her safety

You’d expect what happened to her phone to have been reported. That it had been lost, or that she was found with it… something.

I can’t imagine leaving someone suspended, knowing it would take hours for help to arrive.

I think he didn’t intentionally leave her in a ‘Right, stay there, I’ll get help’ kind of way. I think he did what he’d done before, got impatient and left her behind. And on this occasion, in these conditions, she died.

I also wonder if her Mum is still singing his praises, given what she’s heard about his previous history.

" let her go in inappropriate clothes and equipment."

Do women really have so little agency over their own lives? She was Austrian, she grew up seeing people in mountain climbing gear. She was an experienced climber, just not as experience as him. She cannot have been unaware of what equipment serious night climbers use on mountains in winter.

I can imagine he persuaded her to go on the climb even though she only had snowboots. He probably reassured her she would be fine with using them or she just assumed that the boots would be ok because the boyfriend didn't say anything. The boyfriend was far more experienced than her and knew that snowboots are inadequate but he let her climb with her wearing these. Red flag right there.

That’s not how it works in mountaineering

How do you know he didn't push her off the mountain? She was found upside down! He waited long enough to know she would have freezed to death at those temperatures. Also explains why she couldn't phone anyone herself, because things escalated suddenly. I don't know why they don't reopen this one to further scrutiny.

I'm amazed this myth is still in circulation. If you have no signal from your operator but have some signal from another operator, you can still call emergency services. If you have no signal at all, you cannot call anyone. Period. And even if you do have a signal to call emergency services, it can still make sense to leave your climbing partner on the mountain while you go to get help. You know exactly where your partner is, so can help the emergency services find them. Indeed, according to the defence, Kerstin told Thomas to go and get help and, when he had second thoughts and returned, told him to go on his own and save his own life. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether this is true.

It is concerning that there does not appear to be any recording of the call Thomas P made at 00:35. The police say he told them everything was fine. He says he called for help. If the rescue attempts had started then, she may have survived. Why would anyone call the police to tell them everything was fine? If he did, that seems very odd behaviour. If he is correct that he called for help, her death may be down to the police's failure to act on that call. By the way, it is the prosecution's case that he put his phone on silent but here is no evidence that he actually did so. He says he did not, but that he simply didn't hear the calls and that he didn't feel his phone vibrating.

I wouldn't read anything into the state she was in when she was found. As others have said, people suffering from hypothermia often behave in bizarre ways.

I do wonder if they had summit fever - something that can affect mountaineers when they get close to a summit, leading to them pushing on to reach the summit ignoring risks. This often leads to fatal decision making near the summit. They were only about 50m from the summit.

It seems there is at least some evidence that she was nowhere near as inexperienced as the prosecution claimed, with her social media feed suggesting she was a keen mountaineer. Indeed, her parents wrote a letter saying that they don't blame him for what happened and that she had summited mountains far more difficult than this one. But one of the risks with romantic partners climbing with each other is that they may push too hard, trying to impress each other.

Nearly 300 people a year die on Austria's mountains. Criminal proceedings are almost non-existent. The question is whether this was a tragic accident or did his actions constitute gross negligence.

Certainly sounds as though his actions were suspicious, regardless of the girlfriends level of experience; which I do not really think is a critical consideration.

Under British law you have a duty of care towards a person in distress or danger. Under US law I do not think you do. It will depend a lot on how the law of the country they were both in works.

It’s not about being a woman.
if she was a man I’d say the same thing, as a more experienced person you do not go out on a dangerous mountain climb if your partner is wearing snowboarding boots and doesn’t have emergency equipment like blanket, etc. Because you’ll have limited opportunities to save them on the mountain if they don’t even have that. It’s just asking for trouble.

it’s the same with say offpiste skiing. An experienced person should just refuse going with those who don’t have a shower and emergency beacon

Come on, he called emergency services and then “didn’t hear his phone or didn’t feel it vibrate”.
really?
can you genuinely believe that someone calls emergency services in situation like that and then is putting his phone away so far that he can’t hear it or feel vibration?

I don't doubt you would say the same thing. I doubt that everyone would, and I believe there is a strong bias in these cases to believe that the "poor weak little woman" should have been being looked after by the "big strong man with more experience" rather than that women should look out for their own safety.

I don't believe this case would have gone to trial if both had been the same sex.

Exactly. Same in water sports. I simply would not go out with someone who didn't have the right equipment or wasn't suitably experienced for the conditions.

The goal has to be and should always be that you can manage to self rescue and not be dependent on help and that means making sure that everyone in the party is suitably capable and experienced for the conditions and has the right equipment

There's a well documented case on Everest which is talked about in Into Thin Air by John Krakower about hypothermia. They believe that someone quite literally goes mad from hypothermia and in that state can walk off a cliff in a state of delusion whilst stripping off. It's by no means the only such account. Which only serves to highlight more why she should have been in a bivvy - it might have stopped her getting to that point. The assumption that he left her in this condition is one that doesn't take hypothermic delusions into account.

I don't know anything really about mountaineering as I'm well aware this is not the activity for me. Not about this case as this is the first I've heard of it.

The bit about her wearing unsuitable footwear though, that reminds me of an ex from long ago who, looking back on it, had a lot of narcissistic traits. He was forever somehow misleading me about where we were going or what we were doing so that I ended up places in unsuitable shoes. For example, on a farm in high heels. 😐 I think it amused him to make me uncomfortable and looking like a fool.

I didn't say anything about "a bit of hiking"? She could be an extremely competent and experienced hiker but high altitude Alpine mountaineering needs different skills and equipment.

It's not just about difficult mountains but about conditions, climbing a technically challenging mountain on a good summer day is different from climbing an "easier" one in winter at night.

There must be a reason she didn't call for help herself or wave down the helicopter.

Here's a good article with opinions of climbing experts:

www.climbing.com/news/climber-faces-homicide-charges-after-his-partner-dies/

Given he COULD call from up there - because he did - I have no idea why he left her. You'd call for help, wrap yourself around her, put a blanket on both of you, and keep one of your torches on to help the emergency services to find you, saving the other for if.when the battery goes out.

Turning your phone off and wandering off leaving her without the shelter/blanket you have in your rucksack IS manslaughter. Whether she was an experienced climber or not. Even experienced climbers get injured, and if the person with them just leaves them exposed when they themselves are also experienced, if they turn their phone off, if they have signal but don't use it... I can't make it add up.