In the case of a group of 99 German schoolchildren who had to be rescued from mountain distress in Kleinwalsertal in June 2022, the Feldkirch public prosecutor’s office has decided not to prosecute the responsible teacher.
The matter was settled with a one-year probationary period in the course of a diversion, said Heinz Rusch, spokesman for the Feldkirch public prosecutor’s office, on Friday when asked by the APA. The teacher in question had selected the route on the Internet.
Students panicked
The group consisting of 99 twelve to fourteen year olds and eight companions from a high school in Maxdorf in Rhineland-Palatinate was on June 7, 2022 on an unsigned tour on the narrow Heuberggrat, which according to the police “requires a head for heights, sure-footedness and experience in alpine terrain “, got into mountain distress. The route was wet and slippery due to previous rainfall, the group had no alpine experience, and the shoes and clothing of some of the children did not correspond to the conditions. When a sub-group decided to turn back because of the difficult circumstances, two students began to slip. Some children then panicked and a teacher made an emergency call.
Case made headlines
About 70 people were brought down to the valley with two helicopters using dew rescue and evacuation sets in a three-hour large-scale operation, the others descended accompanied by the mountain rescue service. “Several students were exhausted, hypothermic, soaked and completely distraught,” the police described the situation at the time. Nobody got hurt. The teacher had selected the tour based on a rating on a mountaineering site on the internet. The case made national headlines and a lack of understanding. In their reactions, mountain rescue and the Austrian Alpine Club (ÖAV) advised against relying on the internet for route planning. The costs for the operation amounted to more than 13,000 euros, which the state of Rhineland-Palatinate then took over.
Investigations into negligent public endangerment
The public prosecutor’s office in Feldkirch began investigations into the matter because of negligent endangerment of the community and asked the German colleagues at the public prosecutor’s office in Frankenthal to take over the case against the teacher responsible. Because of a different legal situation in Germany – public danger is defined differently there and the German authorities did not see any criminal norm violated – the proceedings against the educator were dropped there in August. The case was therefore referred back to Austria, where it was now agreed on a diversion.
