French hiker pulled from ravine ten days after fall
French hiker’s body is recovered from Italian ravine ten days after he fell and broke both legs and made emergency call saying: ‘I see the sea but don’t know where I am’
- Hiker Simon Gautier, 27, broke both legs when he fell down a cliff on 9 August
- Was unable to give location but was walking along the coastline to Naples
- Family say the Italian rescue team were too slow to respond to his calls
- Firefighters, sniffer dogs, drones and helicopters all deployed to find him
A French hiker has been found dead more than a week after he fell down an Italian ravine and broke both his legs.
Simon Gautier, 27, broke both legs when he fell down a cliff on 9 August but was unable to give his location to emergency services.
He told authorities on the phone that he was ‘in the middle of nowhere, on the coast’ and that he could ‘see the sea but I don’t know where I am.’
He added that he was ‘dying of pain.’
Simon Gautier went missing on August 9 during a solo hike 125 miles away from Italy’s southern city of Naples. According to Italian media, the arts student was found in a ravine after falling down a sheer cliff and broke both his legs. He contacted emergency services but was unable to provide a location. The rescue of his body took ten days
In this photo taken yesterday, the Italian mountain rescue team can be seen abseiling down a sheer cliff face in an attempt to locate the body of missing French student Simon Gautier
The Italian mountain rescue team can be seen here pulling the body of French hiker Simon Gautier to the top of a cliff. The young man went missing ten days ago during a solo hike towards Italy’s southern city of Naples
After scanning the landscape with binoculars, authorities were finally able to find the location of his fall by identifying his backpack on Sunday – ten days after the fall -according to Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
His family has complained that it took too long for rescuers to organise the search.
Teams of firefighters and alpine rescuers along with a helicopter and drones were deployed on Sunday to scour the trepidous terrain and cliffs bordering the sea.
Blood was found on a footpath which pointed the rescue team to the ravine. They set about retrieving Gautier’s body on Monday.
The picture above shows the cliff and slope in San Gionvanni a Piro, southern Italy, where French hiker Simon Gautier fell, broke both his legs and later died
An alpine rescuer can be seen looking down at the deadly cliff from the advanced base camp used to set out to find French hiker Simon Gautier. On Sunday the team identified his backpack through binoculars, which pointed them to the place he fell
Gautier was walking alone along the coastline heading towards the southern Italian city of Naples when he disappeared.
The student had been living in Rome for two years working on a thesis on art history. He set out to hike alone from Policastro Bussentino to Naples and had sent his family a picture of his backpack.
On Sunday evening a vigil was planned in the village of Scario, the closest to the search area, where an open-air mass had been held in the afternoon for the rescue teams and the young man.
Alpine rescuers can be seen above co-ordinating the retrieval of Simon Gautier’s body from the ravine he fell in which later killed him. Family of the deceased accuse rescuers of taking too long to organise the search and are calling for an inquiry
A vigil was held last night in the village of Scario, the closest to where Gautier fell. An open-air mass was held in the afternoon for both the alpine rescue team and for the young man
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