The ice skating rink in the Bavarian mountain town collapsed on January 2, 2006, killing 13 children and three women. Thirty-four were injured. The sport hall architect and a building inspector – who had approved the structure just three years before the accident – were found not guilty.
But engineer Walter Grimm admitted to miscalculating the weight the roof could bear when he helped build the structure in the 1970s. It collapsed after a snowstorm dumped almost 200 kilogrammes of snow on the structure a few days before.
The defence lobbied the Traunstein court to get acquit all of the suspects, saying the city of Bad Reichenhall was responsible for the accident because it had “not tended to anything” for some 35 years, the lawyer said.
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