- Margherita Lega, 41, was hiking in the Italian Alps with her family
A mother has fallen 150 metres from a cable car in Italy after being dragged down in front of her shocked family.
The woman, named Margherita Lega, was hiking with her family during a holiday in the Italian Alps when the strange tragedy occurred around 11am this morning.
The 41-year-old was loading luggage into the teleferica, a small cable car used to transport luggage and objects instead of people, when she got caught on the device and it suddenly turned on.
She clung on as the cable lifted her more than 50 meters over the edge of a cliff, but then she could no longer support her weight and let go, falling to her death, La Repubblica reported.
Mrs Lega’s two children, who are believed to have witnessed their mother’s horrific death, are being cared for while her husband has been taken to the local police station following the horrific incident, which is now under investigation.
According to reports, the family was trying to reach a hut on the mountain in the Calasca Castiglione area when the woman fell into the gorge.
The cable car, which connects the hamlet of Olino with the Drocala alpine pasture they were trying to reach, would cover a distance of about 400 metres and cross a steep gorge.
The cable car is usually operated by two people, at the two points, top and bottom. The starting point is not visible from where the controls are located at the top, according to reports.
Calasca Castiglione Mayor Silvia Tipaldi said she was “shocked” by the tragic death and offered her condolences to the family.
“We are shocked,” she said, adding: “We await the magistrate’s investigation into the factory to get more information about what has unfortunately turned out to be a tragedy.”
More than 100 emergency services, including firefighters, police officers and mountain rescue teams, quickly arrived at the scene.
With the help of a helicopter and climbers on the ground, the woman’s body was eventually found in the valley.
Rescue workers in the Alps retrieved her body by hoisting themselves out of the helicopter and pulling the woman out of the gorge through the air.
According to reports, prosecutors have closed the cable car to investigate whether all safety measures were being followed at the site.
It is reported that the system has suddenly rebooted. The reason why the system started driving uphill is still under investigation.
The incident took place in the Anzasca Valley, a popular hiking area in the Piedmont region, northeast of Turin.
Ms Lega is believed to be from Fiavè, a small town in the north-eastern Italian region of Trento, a four-hour drive from Calasca Castiglione.
Italy has been hit by cable car disasters before. In 2021, 14 people died when a cable snapped and a car was thrown 20 meters down.
The cable car took passengers to a mountain overlooking Lake Maggiore in the western Alps, as the cable car descended 300 metres from the station.
Shocking footage of the disaster shows how close the passengers were to safety before the cabin went off the mountain.
A cable can be seen snapping, sending the car and passengers plummeting back down as they are thrown violently through the cabin.
A separate video shows the carriage flying away and falling out of sight behind the ridge, where it crashes, killing 14 of the 15 people on board.
Another gondola disaster in the Dolomites killed 20 people when a US Air Force pilot and a wagon full of holidaymakers collided with the cables.
The tragedy in Cavalese in 1998 came 22 years after an earlier tragedy in the same town, in which 43 people died when their hut slid 90 metres down and was crushed.