Girl, 5, dragged to death by escaped balloon
Tue 10 Jun 2003
A five-year-old girl was killed after being carried away entangled in the ropes of a helium balloon ripped from its moorings during a violent thunderstorm.
The child, daughter of a British serviceman and his German wife, was at a summer fair at the British army's German headquarters in Rheindahlen on Sunday afternoon.
Her body was found two hours later near where the balloon came down, in a farmyard 43 miles from the base. Local police said she may have been conscious during the flight. The rope wrapped itself around her arm, according to the police chief, Rainer Rostek, who had been in the emergency control room. "The girl was caught just by her arm. We suspect that she was killed by the [landing] impact."
The balloon was reported last night to have hit a power line. It was intended to take passengers up into the air for a bird's eye view, as part of a range of family entertainments at the International Day, an annual fair that attracts visitors from across Germany. ...
"There was an enormous storm with thunder and lightning, huge hailstones and very, very strong winds. These winds swept across the showground causing devastation, lifting up tents and so on." ...
The balloon, belonging to the Royal Artillery, was teth ered by seven ropes, including one attached to a car. "The wind was so strong it broke all of these anchors, and swept the balloon away. As the ropes tangled underneath it, one of them caught hold of the little girl and wrapped itself around her and took her away" ...
"The wind got up and within 20 or 30 seconds it was approaching 100mph, knocking down everything in its path. All of a sudden this yellow balloon went past. There was something hanging from it."
"At first I thought it was a person who had attempted to grab the balloon to stop it leaving its bearings. But then I thought it couldn't be - nobody would do that - and I presumed it was a dummy." ...
The child's body was found a short distance away from the wreckage of the balloon in a farmyard in Hamminkeln, near the Dutch border. She has yet to be formally identified. A postmortem examination is due and the British and German authorities have begun a joint investigation.
Her father works at British headquarters in Rheindahlen near Mönchengladbach.
The rest of the show, due to have continued yesterday, a bank holiday in Germany, was cancelled. ...