A 24-year-old waitress has been identified as the person holding the sparklers that started the deadly fire at a nightclub in Crans-Montana on New Year's Eve 2026.
The videos that were released recorded the moment the bar's ceiling caught fire from the sparklers when they touched the insulation that had been installed.
Cyane Panine, who lost her life on the fateful night at the Le Constellation bar, was identified by the owners of the business, according to interrogation minutes cited by the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger.
According to the same source, the owner of the business, Jessica Moretti, had asked the young waitress to "liven up the atmosphere" at the bar in the early hours of January 1st.
This, as the Daily Mail reports, involved waitresses putting sparklers in champagne bottles and some of them climbing onto the shoulders of their colleagues.
According to the court filing, Cyane died of asphyxiation "in a pile of bodies behind a locked door."
As the 49-year-old owner of the business described in his testimony, when he opened the basement door he found the 24-year-old dying, surrounded by "a pile of bodies."
Speaking about Cyane, the 49-year-old said she was the girlfriend of a close family friend who had “raised her as if she were their own child.” He said he and the 24-year-old’s boyfriend “tried to resuscitate her for over an hour on the street near the bar, until emergency services told us it was too late.”
"Whatever the investigation reveals, this young woman followed the instructions of her employers. She did what the CEO asked her to do. This was not unusual. (…) This young employee bears no responsibility," the lawyers for the 24-year-old's family said in a statement.
