Three people were arrested in Italy on Wednesday after a cable car fell on a mountain and left 14 dead, including a child, and left another child seriously injured.
Investigators say the emergency brakes had been disabled and the three members of the operating company were aware of this, the BBC reported.
LaPresse news agency identified the three people arrested as the owner of the cable car service, the company's director and the service chief.
"The three detainees had known about the failure of the emergency brake system for weeks," news agency EFE quoted prosecutor Olimpia Bossi as saying.
ABC News said the investigation was continuing, but the mayor of the home town of one of the victims, Serena Cosentino, announced that the city would pursue legal action against those responsible.
He was cited as saying the city of Diamante, in southern Calabria, would present itself as an injured party in the civil portion of any possible prosecution.
“The news, unfortunately, is showing a broad picture of responsibility and omissive guilt," mayor Ernesto Magorno was quoted as saying in a statement.
The accident happened on Sunday on a service transporting passengers from the resort town of Stresa up the nearby Mottarone mountain in the region of Piedmont.
The BBC quoted the Israeli foreign ministry as saying that five of its nationals were among the dead. Most of the victims died at the crash site.
According to ABC News, doctors at Turin’s Regina Margherita paediatric hospital reported that the lone survivor of the disaster, 5-year-old Eitan Biran, had begun to open his eyes after they gradually brought him out of sedation.
Biran suffered several broken bones in the crash, which claimed the lives of his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents. An aunt who was not in the cable car is with him at the hospital, the US broadcaster wrote.
African News Agency (ANA)