Posted on 02/20/2026 7:03:05 AM PST by BenLurkin
An Austrian climber has been found guilty of gross negligent manslaughter after his girlfriend froze to death on Austria's highest mountain last year.
The man, named only as Thomas P in line with Austrian privacy laws, has been given a five-month suspended sentence and fined €9,600 (£8,400).
His girlfriend, Kerstin G, died of hypothermia during a climbing trip on the Grossglockner mountain in January 2025.
In a statement sent to the BBC, the court said it considered Thomas P's previous clean record and the loss of a person close to him "to be mitigating factors".
...
The court also heard from Andrea B, a former girlfriend of Thomas P, who described how he had left her alone on a previous tour on the Grossglockner in 2023.
She said she had been at the end of her tether, feeling dizzy and her headlight had gone out.
She said she was crying and screaming when he suddenly disappeared, walking ahead and leaving her behind.
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Hofer suggested instead that, based on her position in the photos taken by the rescue team, she may have had a fall.
The court heard how the mountain rescue team found her body hanging upside down from a rock face, according to Austrian reports.
"We were amazed that she remained in that position," one of the rescuers told the court. If the wind had been any stronger, "she would have fallen over the south face".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Potential future girlfriends should be aware that he has a pattern and decline invitations to go mountain climbing with him.
But then she became frigid...
Ha...years ago (45?)...a boyfriend left me standing alone as we entered a very large casino in Vegas..He just wandered off without telling me (must have turned my head). I just panicked...and, I promptly dumped him on return home
... but it’s all over now!
Solution: Stop trying to climb mountains with weak women. Or find a less exhausting way to break up with them.
I wouldn’t take a group into serious mountaineering country without a lot of workup training. Example: bouldering and top roping and lead climbing at Squamish. Cardio tests with easy hikes timed, and other assessments. Once you get into the backcountry 14 hours up a mountain into some saddles or passes or even further up, the idea of rescue is about nil. You best be sure you can make it.
Wow they gave him as close to a womans sentencing as a man can get. If the roles were reversed she’d be fined for littering on the mountain, and getting book deals and being told well you had to look out for you, hes an adult...
Sounds like manslaughter laws in Austria are similar to Italy. Anytime anybody dies from anything other than natural causes and there’s another individual involved, they’re liable to get jammed up for manslaughter. And there’s usually no jail time but a big stonkin’ fine.
When F1 driver Ayrton Senna was killed in a crash at the San Marino GP* in 1994, the Italians spent more than 10 years trying to jam up several of Williams Racing’s higher-ups for the accident. They ended up convicting the team boss but only after the statute of limitations had expired, so there could be no punishment rendered apart from the damage to his reputation.
*San Marino is an independent country but it’s too small and mountainous for a race track, so they use the Imola circuit, near Bologna, which put the matter of his death under Italian jurisdiction.
But women can do anything a man can do, so she couldn’t make it alone ??
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