TL:DR
- Cyane Panine, 24, died in a fire at Le Constellation nightclub on New Year’s Eve.
- She was filmed wearing a crash helmet and holding sparklers, which ignited soundproofing foam.
- The fire claimed 40 lives and injured 116 others.
- Club owners described her final moments; she suffocated behind a locked door.
- Owners face potential manslaughter charges; Cyane’s family claims she followed their instructions and bears no responsibility.
Helmet-wearing waitress holding sparklers among 40 killed in Swiss bar inferno | News World
Waitress Cyane Panine, 24, died in the fire at Le Constellation on New Year’s Eve
A waitress filmed wearing a crash helmet and carrying the sparklers that allegedly started the fatal Swiss nightclub fire has been named among the dead.
Cyane Panine, 24, was one of the 40 young people killed in the New Year’s Eve inferno at Le Constellation in Crans-Montana. She has now been identified as the woman wearing a helmet seen in footage recorded moments before the fire broke out, according to 20minuten.
Photos and videos show the young woman sitting on a colleague’s shoulders holding two champagne bottles with sparklers attached, before the ceiling catches fire.
The waitress was hoisted onto the shoulders carrying a Champagne sparkler
Last week, the owners of the Swiss bar, Jacques and Jessica Moretti, recounted how Cyane, whom they viewed as ‘a stepdaughter,’ suffocated ‘in a pile of bodies behind a locked door.’ According to interrogation transcripts seen by Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, the owners clearly identified the deceased 24-year-old in photos taken during the incident.
Providing a detailed account of the disaster, Mr. and Mrs. Moretti said Cyane’s last moments alive encapsulated the full horror of the evening. Mrs. Moretti, 40, had encouraged Cyane to ‘get the atmosphere going’ at the bar in the early hours of January 1. This included getting waitresses to put sparklers in champagne bottles, before some were lifted up on the shoulders of waiters in the bar’s basement.
The flames from the sparklers are thought to have lit soundproofing foam in the ceiling, triggering the massive fire that killed 40 people and severely burned 116 others. Mr. Moretti, 49, eventually broke open the door to the basement from the outside and found Cyane dying, surrounded by a ‘pile of bodies.’
Recalling how he found her, he said: ‘I went out onto the patio [behind the bar]. All the windows were open. There were a lot of people there. I tried to get inside but it was impossible. There was far too much smoke.’ He also told the Vallais public prosecutor’s office that he only became aware the bar’s ‘service door’ was ‘locked from the inside and on a latch’ after the fire.
Mr. Moretti said: ‘We forced it open – it finally gave way in a few seconds. When the door opened, several people were lying on the floor, unconscious. My stepdaughter Cyane was one of them. We pulled them all outside and put them in the recovery position.’
He said Cyane was the girlfriend of a close family friend whom the Morettis had ‘raised as if he were my own.’
Mr. Moretti said he and Cyane’s boyfriend ‘tried to resuscitate her for more than an hour in the street near the bar, until the emergency services told us it was too late.’ Within the hour, Cyane had died. Meanwhile, Mrs. Moretti is said to have driven herself home, after allegedly escaping from the bar with the till containing the night’s cash earnings. Mrs. Moretti told investigators: ‘Cyane was like a little sister to me. She had spent Christmas with us. I was devastated.’
Mr. Moretti is currently in custody, while his wife has been bailed with an electronic bracelet. The couple await a possible trial on a range of charges, including manslaughter and causing bodily harm by negligence.
Cyane’s family issued a statement through their lawyers, Tages-Anzeiger reported. It reads: ‘Whatever the investigation reveals, this young woman followed her employers’ instructions. She did what was asked of her by the managing director. This was nothing unusual. (…) This young employee bears no responsibility whatsoever.’