Abseiling girl crushed to death by cable car
The family of a teenage British holidaymaker watched in horror as she was crushed to death in a cable car mechanism as she prepared to abseil down a South African mountain.
Police Captain Andre Traut said Cara Weaver, from Dorset, had been told to leave the clearly marked no-go zone in Cape Town's Table Mountain moments before the tragedy happened.
She had been with her parents and a brother on a safari and adventure holiday to Namibia and South Africa since December 17.
Mr Traut said: "She went up in the cable car with her family. She went into a restricted area under the cable car.
"The cable cars have a platform with a hydraulic movement. When the car came in she found herself inside this hydraulic movement. Her head was stuck and she broke her neck."
She was airlifted by helicopter to the Vincent Pallotti Hospital in Pinelands where she was pronounced dead.
Cable car staff and members of the public who witnessed the accident clambered on to a ledge 1,000m above the ground where Cara lay and tried in vain for 40 minutes to revive her.
John Harrison, managing director of Table Mountain Cableway in Cape Town, performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before the air ambulance service arrived.
He said: "Her mother and father were with her and would have seen it. The mother was very distressed. "
Mr Harrison added: "We lost her pulse a number of times. I tried mouth-to-mouth on her but she did not respond. I was there within four minutes of it happening."
