GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Mary Richardson Kennedy’s death and burial, like her life, has been a struggle. The 52-year-old designer/architect and environmentalist, estranged wife of Robert Kennedy Jr involved in a rancorous divorce case, was found dead 16 May and her hanging was ruled a suicide. The Kennedy family held a wake Friday near Boston, Massachussetts, but the the Richardson family also announced it was holding a wake in Manhattan at an unspecified date. The families went to court over custody of the body; the court documents were then sealed. “The medical examiner’s office in Westchester County had been told there would be court proceedings related to custody of Mary Kennedy’s body and waited for a court order before releasing it to a funeral home in Bedford,” NPR cites county spokeswoman Donna Greene as saying.
The couple had four children. Mary was Kennedy’s second wife; the two married in 1996 but had known each other since she was a teenage friend of Robert’s sister Kerry, who told US media outside the Catholic church where the service was held that “She struggled so hard, for so long, with mental illness, which so many Americans suffer with … She fought with dignity, and in the end, the demons won.”
AP video
Scene of drowning Monday in canton Valais
SION, SWITZERLAND – A 42-year-old Dutch man who lives in Valais died Monday morning 14 May when he fell into the fast-moving Rhone river in the Goms Valley, near Reckingham.
Police say that while doing maintenance work at the Augenstern campground he began emptying a wheelbarrow into the river at 11:30. For reasons that are not clear, he fell into the water.
His body was found 800 metres downstream by workers at the Gommerkraftswerke electric power station.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Alexander Dale Oen, age 26, one of the world’s finest competitive swimmers, was found dead in his Arizona hotel room shower Monday 30 April. The medical examiner reported he died of cardiac arrest and there were no signs of foul play. He had been doing high altitude training with his team.
Dale Oen was widely considered a favourite for the London Olympics this summer and he was Norway’s great swimming hope.
The New York Times recalls that “at last summer’s world championships in Shanghai, Dale Oen turned in the most emotionally charged performance of the meet. Competing in the 100 breaststroke final three days after 77 people, mostly children, died in the worst massacre in Norway’s history, he won in 58.71 seconds. It was the fastest time recorded by a swimmer not wearing the now-banned polyurethane suits and the fourth fastest in history.”
Links to other sites: ESPN, New York Times, SuperSport (rival Kitajima’s remarks)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Michel Chevrolet, the 39-year-old Geneva politician who was found dead in his Rives apartment 24 April, died of natural causes, Geneva’s public attorney said Thursday 26 April in a statement. There will be no criminal investigation into his death as a result, although additional medical tests are underway, says the judicial office. The autopsy results will not be known for several weeks.
Le Matin and sister newspaper La Tribune de Geneve report, without citing the source, that he had recently had a battery of medical tests in preparation for a heart bypass scheduled for June, but that the tests did not reveal any major problems.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Police are investigating the death of politician and former local media figure Michel Chevrolet, age 39, at his home Tuesday 24 April. The city of Geneva issued a statement noting that he died “suddenly” and a number of politicians have issued statements noting their shock at the death of one of the city’s most dynamic young politicians. Police have issued no details and early media reports that implied the possibility of foul play have been toned down. (Correction: please note that our own translation of “brutalement” as “brutally” was most likely a misinterpretation; under the circumstances “sudden” is probably a more accurate translation)
Chevrolet, a member of the PDC, was born in Argentina, but grew up mainly in Geneva, where he became involved in politics at an early age. He came to local fame as the editor-in-chief at radio station Leman Bleu and later at One FM, before creating a communications agency, comChevrolet.
The municipal councilor’s campaign for a seat on the administrative council in February 2011 was characterized at the time by TSR public TV as “American” and he was described Tuesday by more than one politician, in several local media, as very warm and outgoing.
The Tribune de Geneve cites friends who say he was busy planning two trips abroad and had invited numerous people to a grand gala in May to celebrate the expansion of his communications agency and the recent purchase of a magazine. “Michel was someone who lived at 200 kph,” the Tribune quotes Green Party national councilor and fellow Argentinian Antonio Hodgers as saying.
For his 2011 campaign Chevrolet created a Lip Dub about Geneva, a city he defended passionately.
Val d'Anniviers, above St Luc, avalanche that took the life of a 45-year-old Dutch skier 17 April
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 45-year-old Dutch man who lives in The Netherlands died in an avalanche Tuesday 17 April in canton Valais.
He and another person were ski touring in the Val d’Anniviers when they were caught by the avalanche at 12:40. The other skier managed to get free and call for help but the Dutch man was buried under snow and died from his injuries.
The two had left St Luc for the Vijivi Pass. The avalanche was set off as they came back down, at about 2,900 metres.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 32-year-old British man who lives in the UK, whose identity has not been released by canton Valais police, died during the night of Wednesday-Thursday 11-12 April, after falling from a third-floor balcony in Verbier.
The man’s body was found at 08:20 Thursday at the foot of the building by a passerby, who contacted police. The circumstances surrounding his fall are unclear, police say. An investigation has been opened and an autopsy ordered.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, died Wednesday 11 April at the age of 93, in Alger, a few days after the country marked the 50th anniversary of its independence from France.
Ben Bella joined the anticolonialist resistance after serving during the Second World War in the Free French forces in Europe. He later became one of the leading figures in Algeria’s violent struggle to achieve independence. Ben Bella entered politics after being moved by the killing of over 1500 anti-colonialist protesters by French troops in the town of Sétif in 1945.
He presided a one-party state, from 1963 to 1965, before being deposed by the army chief. In later years, he supported democracy and was critical of Islamist forces which gained ground in the 1990s.
Ben Bella’s father had changed his year of birth, allowing him to leave school and return to work on the family farm, the New York Times reports. His official, albeit modified, date of birth was reported in the Algerian press as 25 December 1916, making him 95 at death.
Man dies in Sion city centre
Youth critically injured near Fechy
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 47-year-old Valais man died in the early hours of Friday after he drove into the wall of a building in the centre of Sion, say Valais police. He was heading down towards the train station on the Avenue de la Gare when for reasons that are not yet clear he lost control of his car and drove into a wall. The accident occurred at 01:00 and the man was hospitalized in critical condition but he died during the morning.
Vaud police say an accident on the Nyon-Cottens road at 22:30, between Féchy and Aubonne, has left a 26-year-old from the region in critical condition, while a 19-year-old passenger was able to get out of their crashed car and is uninjured. The car, a purple BMW M3 crashed “violengtly” into a rail and wall next to the vineyards. The driver had to be cut out of the car before being taken to the Chuv.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – An 80-year-old woman landed a small plane on her fourth attempt in Door County, Wisconsin, with help from the control tower and a pilot who flew a small plane alongside her, when her husband, the pilot, was taken ill. Helen Collins had not flown a plane for 30 years and doesn’t have a pilot’s license. Her husband John Collins, 81, was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. Officials say the plane did not have enough fuel left for her to attempt a fifth landing.
The Green Bay Gazette reports that pilot Robert Vuksanovic went up in a Beechcraft Bonanza, a small plane that allowed him to fly beside the twin engine Cessna 414 that was going at about 170 mph when first intercepted. His wife, an experienced flight instructor, stayed on the ground and talked Helen Collins down to the airport. Her husband was the founder of a company that supplies parts to the plumbing industry in Sturgeon Bay in Door County, popular in the Midwest as a northern Wisconsin resort area.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 62-year-old man died Monday afternoon following an accident at the Montreux exit of the A1 autoroute in the direction of Villeneuve. The driver lost control of his car for reasons that are not yet clear, say Vaud police. The car hit the exit sign after swerving on the road and the motor was thrown 50m as a result of the impact.
Rescue workers spent nearly 1.5 hours freeing the man from the car, during which time an emergency doctor treated him, before he was taken to a local hospital, then to the Chuv, where he later died.
The autoroute exit was closed until 13.40.
Earlier in the day a serious accident involving three vehicles created a traffic jam of several km in the other direction, shortly after the Blecherette exit.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss high court for criminal cases has told a Fribourg cantonal court it must reopen the case against a police officer by a French youth whose brother died from a bullet while the two were fleeing the scene of a crime in Fribourg in April 2010. The cantonal court had ruled the case closed, but the Lausanne federal court says the decision was premature and the case must be heard.
The issue is whether the policeman was acting in self-defense or if he shot to kill illegally. The officer had just arrived on the scene and was helping to set up a roadblock to stop the brothers, who had a stolen car.
The two brothers, who lived in France, were 18 at the time of the crime.
Background story, GenevaLunch, April 2010
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – An 18-year-old drowned,and two friends who were with him on a small craft in Lake Geneva early Friday morning were hospitalized at the Chuv university hospitals. The three were spotted by a passerby at 06:15 who phoned the 117 emergency number after noticing that they were in trouble in the lake near the Bellerive swimming pool.
Police arrived quickly and took charge of the two who had managed to swim to shore but were suffering from hypothermia. They told police their friend was missing and a search, with the police lake brigade and police units from Lausanne and Morges, as well as a Rega helicopter, got underway.
His body was found soon after, in 2.8 metres of water just 30-40 metres from shore.
The three youths had stolen a small plastic rowboat and were headed towards Morges, on a calm lake, but with the water only 7C. For reasons police say are not yet clear, the boat overturned.
The three were from Neuchatel.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office has officially ruled singer Whitney Houston’s death “accidental” from drowning, with cocaine, found in her system, and heart disease as factors.
The toxicology report cited by a number of US media shows the presence of drugs that did not contribute to the death of the 48-year-old, including marijuana, Alprazolam (Xanax), Cyclobenzaprine (Flexeril) and Diphenhydramine (Benadryl).
Bastien Monnet, body found in woods near Martigny
SION, SWITZERLAND – Police in canton Valais say the body of 20-year-old Bastien Monnet, who has been missing from Martigny since 29 January 2012, was found in woods in Vérossaz 17 March by a farmer.
No further details were provided.
A second death was reported Tuesday morning 20 March in St Luc, in the Val d’Anniviers.
A passerby reported seeing the wreckage from a car crash on the route du Prilet, a road down to Vissoie, shortly after 09:00.
Police arriving on the scene found a 27-year-old Frenchman who was injured but who had managed to get out of the car on his own.
St Luc crash took one life, left a 27-yr-old man injured
They also found the body of a 33-year-old French woman.
The circumstances surrounding the accident are not yet clear, according to police.
BASEL, SWITZERLAND – A psychiatric hospital patient who escaped Tuesday evening 13 March stole a car and crashed into a number of people, killing a cyclist and injuring six other people, news agency ATS reports. Details to follow as police make them available.
In other breaking police news, 20 Minutes reports that a four-year-old boy fell 13 metres from his family’s apartment building in the Bourdonnette district of Lausanne, shortly before 18:00and he is in critical condition at the Chuv university hospitals, but the information has not been confirmed by police.
Barrhorn accident site, 11 March 2012 (photo, Valais police)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 35-year-old German man died Sunday morning at 09:45 when he fell several hundred metres from the top of a cliff at the Barrhorn in canton Valais.
The mountain, part of the Pennine Alps, is popular with ski tourers and, in warmer weather, hikers.
He and another ski tourer had left the Turtmann hut with skins and skis to climb to the top of the Barrhorn, 3,600 metres, but partway up they realized they would not be able to reach the peak from the path they were on and they turned around to return to the hut.
On the way down, one of the skiers slipped and fell off the edge of the cliff, for reasons that are not clear.
The other skier was able to alert police immediately, but the doctor sent who arrived declared the man dead at the scene of the accident.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – A man was killed with a knife during a fight at the Staefa station in Zurich shortly after 18:00, city police say. Bypassers and rescue workers provided immediate help but failed to save the man. Another man is under arrest, but police are not providing further details.
World Cup finals canceled in Grindelwald
Nik Zoricic (photo: Canadian Ski Federation)
GENEVA / BERN, SWITZERLAND -Nik Zoricic of Canada, 29, died early Saturday afternoon in Grindelwald, canton Bern, after taking a bad fall during the Ski Cross World Cup 10 March. “Zoricic fell heavily just before the finish in the round of eight, crashing directly into the safety netting and thereafter lay motionless”, Swiss Ski, the organizers, said in a statement issued at 15:15. “The medical care from team doctors and Air Glacier followed immediately. Despite reanimation Zoricic died at 12.35 as a result of severe neurotrauma.”
Zoricic began his ski career as an Alpine athlete and switched later to Ski Cross. He was sixth in the overall standings in 2011 and he won two podium places in his career, one this season in Les Contamines, France, and one during 2010/11.
The Toronto Star, hometown newspaper for Zoricic, reported Saturday that “the Zoricic family was a fixture on the Ontario ski scene after coming to Canada from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, when Nik was just five. His father, Bebe Zoricic, is the FIS coach at the Craigleith Ski Club in the Blue Mountains ski area. ‘He lived with ski racing his whole life,’ said [Alpine Canada president Max] Gartner. ‘The whole heart and soul of the whole family was ski racing.’”
Fellow skiers were holding a candlelight memorial ceremony on the course late Saturday.
The organizers decided to cancel the entire event in Grindelwald, including both races from Saturday 10 March and the World Cup Final Sunday, noting that “the Organizing Committee, FIS and Swiss Ski express their deepest condolences to the family and friends of Nick Zoricic and the Canadian Ski Team.”
He is the second Canadian competitive skier to die in less than two months. Freestyle champion Sarah Burke died 19 February after a crash in Utah, USA.
Link to Canadian Ski Federation site, The Globe & Mail, Canada
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 45-year-old Valais man died on impact when he was thrown from his car, which rolled several times on the A9 autoroute Monday afternoon, between Chexbres and Vevey. Police are seeking witnesses to the accident, which took place shortly after 16:00. The autoroute was initially closed on the Lausanne to Valais side of the road, then limited to one lane, causing a huge tailback until 19:30, according to Vaud police.
Police are asking anyone who noticed the victim’s car shortly before the accident to get in touch by phoning +41 21 644 4444. The man was driving a green Hyundai Ellentra and betweenn Chexbres and Vevey was reportedly going 120kph, passing several people on the right and forcing his way between the lanes so that people in both lanes were obliged to spread out to accommodate him.
On the downhill stretch towards the Vevey exit, driving at a high speed, he came very suddenly upon a car in the right lane and swerved into the other lane, lost control of his car, which hit the bank separating the lanes of traffic, then rolled. The driver, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the car. It continued its course into the other lane of traffic and hit a gray Fiat driven by a 35-year-old Vaud woman, who appears to have escaped unharmed.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 22-year-old was killed at 06:10 Sunday morning while crossing the autoroute on foot near the airport, Geneva police say. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Highway Security Brigade at 41 22 427 6450.
The young man was hit by a car coming from the Route de Meyrin. The driver, age 58, was in the lane joining the autoroute, heading towards Lausanne and level with the ICC building, when he hit the pedestrian, who was killed by the impact.
ATS news agency says the youth was taking a shortcut, but the police have not confirmed this.
The driver, in a state of shock, was helping police with their inquiry and the autoroute around the airport was closed for two hours for the investigation.
This is the second fatal accident on the autoroute around Geneva since the start of the year.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The tributes poured in as the music world gathered to celebrate the annual Grammy awards, only to learn that hours before singer Whitney Houston had died. The 48-year-old singer was found dead in her hotel room Saturday afternoon 11 February by her bodyguard. Police say there was no sign of criminal involvement and they are investigating her death.
Houston performed Thursday night in a pre-Grammy event and she was scheduled to attend a gala for the awards, at her hotel, Saturday night.
CNN reports that “according to her official website, Houston sold more than 170 million albums, singles and videos. But she also struggled with addiction problems over the years” and recent videos showed an extremely thin and tired-looking Houston.
She began singing early, in churches but went on to top the charts in the 80s and 90s. Her hits included “The Greatest Love of All” and “I’ll Always Love You”.
Links to other sites: Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, MTV
AP video
Incident occurs 1 week after similar accident in Geneva
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Police in Zurich are seeking witnesses after a car crashed into a Zurich disco, the Lambada, early Friday 10 February, killing one person and injuring five others including the driver. Witnesses told journalists that the driver appeared to steer his car into the building intentionally after driving the wrong way up a one-way street at 05:30.
The 25-year-old driver had had a fight with the owner shortly before the incident. The crash killed a 39-year-old man and injured four other men and one woman, all between the ages of 21 and 36.
A week earlier, a man who had had a fight with a disco employee in Vernier, canton Geneva, drove his car into a group standing in front of the club, injuring three young people.
BERN, SWITZERLAND - A 46-year-old man from Zug died after he crashed while skiing in Grindelwald Tuesday afternoon 7 February. The man was coming down the First in the area of Horbach, with relatives, when he crashed, without anyone else involved. When he failed to get up, emergency help was called, but the man was declared dead on the slopes by the Rega rescue crew.
Police are investigating the cause of his death.
Update 8 February 09:00 LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 43-year-old man has died and a 44-year-old woman is in critical condition at the Hug university hospitals in Geneva after what appears to have been a carbon monoxide leak at a chalet in Rossinière, near Château-d’Oex. The man was visiting the area during the ski season, say police. A downstairs neighbour woman, age 58, went up to the first floor apartment to say she smelled something suspicious shortly after noon Tuesday 7 February, but when she discovered the two inanimate bodies she phoned police. She was also briefly hospitalized in the area.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
Later in the day, at 20:00, firefighters were called to route de la Frasse in Rossinière where a chalet had caught fire. No one was injured by the blaze, in an unoccupied chalet with two apartments, but the building was entirely destroyed.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 30-year-old French man who lives in the Lausanne area died Sunday 29 January while diving at Rossinière, near where the Chaudanne river comes out, a Fribourg region spot popular with speleologists. Canton Vaud police say he dived alone, but when those caving with him saw air come up one immediately dived to his rescue and brought him, unconscious, to the surface. Despite first aid by the group he was with, he died at the scene of the accident, despite the arrival of an ambulance crew and emergency doctor.
Police have taken his diving equipment for the investigation.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sarah Burke, 29-year-old Canadian freestyle ski champion, died Thursday 19 January at the University of Utah hospital where she was taken following an accident during training near Salt Lake City a week earlier. Burke had won numerous gold medals in the past five years and CNN reports that she “is considered a pioneer of freestyle skiing and was a major force in getting the ski halfpipe event added to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi”.
The accident occurred as she was doing a superpipe training run. In a fall after making her jump, she tore one of the main arteries that supply blood to the brainstem and the rupture sent her into cardiac arrest. She was without a pulse and spontaneous breathing while the CPR emergency team worked on her at the site and after being taken to the hospital she had surgery 11 January. The surgery was successful in repairing the artery, but she sustained irreversible brain damage in the minutes following the accident and this ultimately caused her death Thursday, according to the skier’s publicist.
In accordance with Burke’s wishes, reports CBC, her organs were donated to others.
Burke married another freestyle skier, Rory , in October 2010 in British Columbia, Canada.
Links to other sites: AP, CBC, CNN, Ski Channel, Vancouver Sun
News video, ABC
Wedding video, Sarah Burke and Rory Bushfield
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A Swiss woman from canton Valais has learned that the French man she divorced in November in fact died in July 2009, but she was never informed by Geneva authorities, the canton where the couple resided, reports Le Nouvelliste.
The two were married for three years, but parted company once she realized he was a spendthrift and fast talker. They had no children, and lost contact with each other. Three years after they separated, in July 2011, she decided to ask for a divorce but was unable to locate him.
She asked French authorities to help, to no avail, reports the Valais newspaper, which spoke to her lawyer. She then asked for a no contest divorce, where the state announces the news twice in order to allow the other partner to come forward. She was awarded the divorce in November – but it was only in December 2011 when she needed money to enlarge her boutique and she was asked for a legal document, the livret de famille from Geneva, that she learned to her shock that her partner had died in July 2009 and she is a widow.
Her lawyer is now seeking an explanation from Geneva and looking into the possibility of having the divorce annulled.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – British satiric artist and cartoonist Ronald Searle died, age 91, in his sleep at the home in the south of France where he had lived since 1961. Searle was best known for his cartoon gothic girls’ school, St Trinians, where murder and mayhem reigned. His dark side is often attributed to his harrowing second world war experience as a prisoner of the Japanese, but his body of work was far-ranging. He illustrated for a number of major publications, including Punch, The New Yorker and Le Monde, and he had a significant influence on a number of other important illustrators and cartoonists, from Ralph Steadman to Walt Disney and Matt Groening.
Links to other sites: Independent, New York Times
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The “Great Successor”, Kim Jong-un, has officially been named the successor to his father, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, 69, who died Monday 19 December of a heart attack while traveling, according to media reports coming out of the country. The son, who is reportedly in his late 20s, surfaced as part of N Korea’s political picture in 2010, when he was appointed to several senior posts, including military ones.
He spent some of his time in early adolescence at a state school in Bern.
South Korea has put its military forces on high alert; the two countries have officially been at war for more than 60 years and N Korea in recent months has been the target of much criticism from the West for its nuclear programme.
Links to other sites: CNN, Sydney Morning Herald, Reuters,
