After a fatal accident in an amusement park: an eyewitness raises serious allegations against the operator

Created: 08/15/2022 05:03

By: Julia Volkenand, Patrick Huljina

After the fatal accident in the wildlife and leisure park in Klotten, the search for the cause continues.

© Harald Tittel/dpa

A woman fell from a roller coaster in the Klotten wildlife and leisure park on Saturday and was fatally injured.

Any help came too late.

• Fatal accident

  in the

  Klotten wildlife and leisure park

  : woman falls off the roller coaster and dies.

• An eyewitness raises

  serious allegations

  against the operator: There is said to have been no manual control of the safety bars.

• This news ticker is updated regularly.

Update from August 8, 11:15 a.m .:

The police continued their investigations after the fatal fall from a roller coaster in the Klotten wildlife and leisure park on Monday.

Traces had already been secured and witnesses questioned, the investigators said.

The cause of the accident is still unknown.

It will be determined in all directions.

In the case of deaths of this kind, public prosecutors can also order the involvement of experts and the autopsy of the victims.

The wildlife and leisure park remained closed on Monday "to support the authorities in quickly clarifying the course of the accident".

The park's website said: "We would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt condolences to the family, relatives and friends!

Our KLOTTI team is still shocked and stunned.” Because the cause of the accident was initially unclear, it remains unclear “how parking operations will look like in the next few days”.

On Saturday afternoon, a 57-year-old woman from St. Wendel in Saarland fell out of the moving roller coaster.

She suffered fatal injuries.

Attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful.

According to the amusement park in Klotten in the Cochem-Zell district in Rhineland-Palatinate, the roller coaster, which opened in 2004, is 532 meters long and 17.5 meters high.

She is curvaceous, with "maximum gradient and up to 60 kilometers per hour fast".

Eyewitness raises serious allegations against operator: Fatal accident in the amusement park

Update from August 8, 7.30 a.m .:

After the fatal accident in the Klotten wildlife and leisure park, the shock is deep.

And it is still unclear how it could happen that the 57-year-old woman was thrown out of the roller coaster at full speed.

An eyewitness to the bad incident spoke

Bild.de.

On the one hand, the rescue workers would not have found the woman who had the accident immediately because she landed in an area that was difficult to access.

So she had to be looked for first, the witness explained - when the first responders found the woman, any help came too late, despite resuscitation measures, she died on the spot.

In addition, the eyewitness raises serious allegations against the operator of the roller coaster.

According to the witness, nobody checked manually whether the safety bars were tight.

Shortly before the accident, his own daughter rode the roller coaster.

The police are still investigating the cause of the accident.

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Fatal accident in the Klotten wildlife and leisure park: woman falls off the roller coaster and dies

First report from August 6th:

Klotten – On Saturday afternoon (August 6th) there was a fatal accident in an amusement park in Klotten, Rhineland-Palatinate.

A 57-year-old woman from St. Wendel in Saarland fell out of a moving roller coaster and was injured so badly that helpers could not save her despite attempts to revive her.

The fall, which happened at 4:30 p.m., exactly one and a half hours before the park closed, resulted in a large-scale deployment of rescue workers.

"On Sunday 7.8.

the Klotti Park will remain closed! ”It says succinctly on the website of the amusement park in Klotten on the Moselle.

The drama that took place in the afternoon, about an hour and a half before the park closed on this summer holiday weekend, leaves nothing to be desired.

A rescue helicopter and the rescue service were on site as well as the volunteer fire brigade, but nobody could do anything for the woman.

On its website, the park describes its "Klotti roller coaster" over a distance of 550 meters with the words "curvy, maximum gradient and up to 60 kilometers per hour".

The park was opened in 1970 as a wildlife park on the Moselle heights near Klotten, according to the website.

Since the 1990s, it has been expanded into a leisure and family park with new attractions.

The roller coaster opened accordingly in 2004.

Woman crashes from roller coaster: prosecutor turned on

As the police announced in the evening, the exact cause of the fall in Klotti Park was initially unclear.

"The investigations are still ongoing," says a police officer from Cochem.

As always in such accidents, the public prosecutor's office was called in.

But all investigations are still at the very beginning: Was it a technical defect, was it negligence or was it fatally careless?

Was there a natural cause of death such as a heart attack?

"To determine that, an autopsy could be ordered," the police officer speculated to the dpa - but that would be a decision by the public prosecutor.

There was also a recent fatal accident on a roller coaster in Aarhus, Denmark, when a 14-year-old girl died after her seat came off.