Arya News - An Australian woman has died after being trapped in a ski lift at a resort in Japan.
An Australian woman has died after being trapped in a ski lift at a resort in Japan .
Brooke Day, 22, was suspended mid-air when her backpack became caught in the mechanism on Friday morning.
She was unable to free herself and suffered a cardiac arrest.
An assistant at the Tsugaike Mountain Resort in Otari, Nagano prefecture, pressed an emergency button to stop the lift, after which she was given first aid.
Ms Day was taken by ambulance to hospital, where she was pronounced dead on Sunday, officials said.
Tsuneo Kubo, the resort’s chief executive, said that an unfastened buckle on her backpack became hooked to the chair.
As the bag was still strapped around her chest, she could not remove it, causing her to be dragged along with the lift.
The incident took place at the top of the Tsuga number two pair lift, police told local media. Ms Day had been riding it with another person.
‘Cherished teammate, friend and daughter’
Mr Kubo expressed his “deepest condolences to the bereaved family” and said safety measures would be strengthened.
The resort and Tsugaike Gondola Lift Company issued a joint apology and said an investigation had been launched.
Ms Day, who was from Queensland and had been snowboarding at the resort, had spent around a year working as a receptionist in a physiotherapy clinic in Hakuba, some 8km south of the ski resort.
Australia’s department of foreign affairs said it was providing consular assistance to her family.
Ms Day’s Australian rugby club, the Nambour Toads, shared a tribute on Monday in which it described her as a “cherished teammate, friend and daughter”.
Her death comes weeks after a five-year-old boy died at a ski resort in northern Japan after his arm became trapped in a magic carpet ski lift.
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