- Margherita Lega, 41, was hiking in the Italian Alps with her family
A mother plunged 500ft to her death from a cable car in Italy after being dragged down a mountain lift system in front of her horrified family.
The woman, named as Margherita Lega, was hiking with her family during a holiday in the Italian Alps when the strange tragedy happened around 11am today.
A 41-year-old woman was loading luggage onto a teleferica machine – a small cable car used to transport luggage and objects, not people – when she caught hold of the device and it suddenly turned on.
She held on as it carried her more than 50 yards over the edge of the cliff before she was no longer able to support her weight and let go, plunging to her death, La Repubblica reports.
Mrs Lega’s two children, who are believed to have witnessed their mother’s harrowing death, are being cared for while her husband was taken to a local police station following the horrific incident, which is now being investigated.
The family was reportedly trying to get to a mountain hut in the Calasca Castiglione area when the woman fell into a ravine.
The cable car, which connects the village of Olino with the alpine pasture of Drocala, which they were trying to reach, is said to cover a distance of about 400 m and crosses a steep ravine.
The ropeway is usually operated by two people, at two points, at the top and at the bottom. From where the controls are at the top, the starting point is reportedly not visible.
Mayor of Calasco Castiglione Silvia Tipaldi said she was “shocked” by the tragic death and offered her condolences to the family.
“We are shocked,” she said, adding: “We are awaiting an inspection of the plant to get more information about what has unfortunately turned out to be a tragedy.”
More than 100 rescuers, including firefighters, police and mountain rescue teams, went to the scene.
With the help of a helicopter and climbers on the ground, they finally located the woman’s body in the valley.
Alpine rescue crew members retrieved her body by riding a winch from the helicopter and airlifting the woman out of the ravine.
Prosecutors reportedly shut down the cable car while they investigated whether all the proper safety precautions were in place.
The system reportedly restarted suddenly and the reason why it started pulling uphill is under investigation.
The incident took place in the Anzasca Valley, a popular tourist area in Piedmont northeast of Turin.
Ms Lega is said to have come from Fiavè, a small town in the northeastern Italian region of Trento, a four-hour drive from Calasco Castiglione.
Italy has been rocked by cable car tragedies in the past, in which a cable snapped in 2021 and threw a carriage 65 feet to the ground, killing 14 people.
The cable car was carrying passengers up a mountain overlooking Lake Maggiore in the Western Alps when it dropped 1,000 feet from the station.
Disturbing footage of the disaster shows how close the passengers were to safety before the cabin crashed down the mountain.
It shows the snap of a cable sending the car and its occupants inside hurtling back down as they are brutally flung across the cabin.
In a separate video, the carriage is seen flying away and out of sight behind the crest of a hill, where it crashed, killing 14 of the 15 people on board.
In another gondola disaster, 20 people died in the Dolomites when a US Air Force pilot crashed into cables holding a carriage full of holidaymakers.
The 1998 Cavalese tragedy came 22 years after another in the same town killed 43 people when their cab slid 300 feet and was crushed.