Fly and Fall Incident – Fatality and Injuries in Colorado
Most people enjoy spending some time with the family, especially during winter vacations where they can sit in warm blankets and enjoy coffee with the people they love, or go outdoors and derive pleasures out of resorts that provide winter activities such as ice skating and/ or chairlifting. While such activities may appear to be fun and a means of spending quality family time, they may also be tagged with unpredicted calamities, ready to strike you or your family members in a miss and hit.
A family who made a trip to a resort located west of Denver in hopes of spending some fantastic family time has now made headlines in a case of what happens when your worst nightmare manifests into reality.
What happened?
Ski Granby Ranch is a family-oriented vacation and amusement resort located 90 miles west of Denver, Colorado. One of the many families that visit this resort every winter, was this family of three from Texas, a 40-year-old single mother, and her two adolescent daughters.
According to on-site witnesses, around 9:30 AM, the trio fell off a four cabinet based chairlift. This incident led to the fatality of the mother, while both the daughters survived the accident. Although the investigators have not yet disclosed specific locations or names of the hospitals, the 12-year-old daughter was admitted to a local hospital in Denver, while the 9-year-old was transferred to Aurora in a certified child care hospital.
Upon investigation from the evidence collected, it was established that though this was the first major incident of this sort here that proved to be lethal, the chairlift had been showing signs of trouble for some time. Vacationers said that they had experienced abrupt jerks and bounces in the chairlift, scaring the people on board.
Earlier the same day, before this horrific incident took place, witnesses reported that the lift had stopped for a couple of minutes, which should’ve been a clear enough sign for the resort to suspend the operation of the chairlift until repairs were made.
The police department’s head of the investigation team member Schelly Olson recorded a statement saying:
“The lift was operating safely to get everyone else off.”
However, with the investigation still under process and the case still running through the legal claims, the validity of this verdict cannot be confirmed.
The Colorado Passenger Tramway Safety Board released a statement that they would be reopening the now-abandoned resort’s chairlift once it is deemed to be secure enough by experts. Only time will tell if guests would be willing to trust the resort’s chairlift again after such an incident, though.
Whatever the court’s verdict may be and no matter how much the resort cooperates with the police department during the investigation, it will suffer the consequences of an otherwise avoidable accident had they shown a more serious consideration towards maintenance.
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