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ACCIDENT

Family of five killed in head-on crash

A car carrying two adults and three children slammed head-on into an oncoming truck on Sweden's E20 motorway on Monday night, killing all five passengers.

Published: 10 January 2012 07:23 CET
Updated: 10 January 2012 11:22 CET

Family of five killed in head-on crash

The victims included a 45-year-old man, a 38-year-old woman, a 2-year-old boy and two girls, aged 11 and 13, police confirmed on Tuesday.

The driver of the truck was also taken to hospital where he was treated for shock following the accident.

Falling snow made for poor visibility and slick roads when the driver apparently lost control of the car, causing it to cross into oncoming traffic and into the path of the truck.

“The long-haul truck was carrying a heavy load of wood chips,” Per Larsson of the Lidköping police told the TT news agency.

The accident took place around 8.30pm as the car was traveling north on the two-lane E20 motorway near Skogsbo, just south of Vara in western Sweden.

Snow had been falling in the region and the roadways were slippery and covered in slush when the two vehicles collided head-on.

The truck pushed the car for around 60 metres before tipping over and coming to rest in the ditch.

Rescue workers were forced to cut open the car to reach the passengers, but discovered all had perished.

According to the duty officer with emergency services in Gothenburg, the car was carrying two adults and three children.

Several hours following the accident, police continued their work to identify the victims, theorizing that it may have been an entire family.

“It’s not unlikely,” Larsson told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

He added the police are still looking into the cause of the crash.

“We have no idea what happened or whose fault it may be,” Larsson told TT.

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Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021

Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The battle for custody of Eitan Biran, the sole survivor of the May accident that killed 14 people, has captured headlines since his maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, brought him to Israel on a private jet last month.

The child lost his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents in the May 23 accident near the top of the Mottarone mountain in the northwestern Piedmont region, where the family was out on a Sunday excursion to the scenic spot served by the cable car.

The cable car’s pull cable snapped just before it reached destination. It then flew backwards, dislodging itself from a second, supporting cable, and crashed to the ground.

Investigations later revealed that emergency brakes that could have stopped the car on its supporting cable, avoiding the tragedy, had been deliberately deactivated to avoid delays following a technical malfunction.

Three individuals responsible for the cable car’s management were subsequently arrested.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP.

Peleg has insisted that he drove Eitan from Italy to Switzerland before jetting him back to Israel – instead of returning him paternal aunt Aya Biran, who lives in northern Italy – because Eitan’s late parents wanted him to be raised in the Jewish state.

But Peleg has become the subject kidnapping probe by Italian prosecutors and Israeli police questioned him over those allegations last month.

A statement Monday from the Tel Aviv court where Aya Biran had filed a complaint said judges “did not accept the grandfather’s claim that the aunt has no custody rights”.

It recognised an Italian judgement that established Biran as a legitimate guardian and said Peleg had “unlawfully” removed the boy from his aunt’s care.

The court “ordered the return of the minor to his usual place of residence in Italy”.

The court also found that “a connection” between the surviving members of the Italy- and Israel-based relatives was in Eitan’s “best interests”.

Peleg was also ordered to pay Biran’s legal fees, amounting to 70,000 shekels ($22,000).

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Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021.

Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The case has stirred emotions in Israel, and throngs of journalists had surrounded the Tel Aviv court for hearings last month, with some pro-Peleg protesters insisting it was wrong to send a Jewish child out of Israel.

Before judges ordered the sides to stop talking to the media, Peleg told Israel’s Channel 12 in September that his grandson was “in the place where he is supposed to be, in his home, in Israel.”

Eitan and his parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg, had been living in Italy, where Amit Biran was studying medicine, together with their other child, Tom.

Eitan suffered severe chest and abdominal injuries and spent a week in intensive care after the May accident that occurred when a cable snapped on the aerial tram bringing weekend visitors to the top of the Piedmont region’s Mottarone mountain.

The accident was one of Italy’s worst in over two decades.

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