A ski lift operator charged with indirect manslaughter after the death of Heathfield schoolboy Kieran Brookes in France during a skiing incidentis expectd to learn his fate tomorrow (Tues, Nov 17).

The 14-year-old Torquay Boys’ Grammar School student, who was among the country’s brightest maths prospects, died after his backpack became entangled in a ski lift at the French Alpine resort of Chatel.

He was strangled and died in the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital 11 days after the accident in February 2011.

Last month, his family was in court in Thonon Les Bains as Richard Cettour, 50, of Bonnevaux, France, who was supervising the ski lift, and lift operator SAEM Sports et Tourisme le Chatel, were accused of a series of serious breaches of health and safety.

Cettour was also facing acccusations of not being at his post at the time of the accident and not reacting to skiers’ calls to hit the emergency stop controls.

The company was accused of failing to enforce a rule banning skiers from boarding ski lifts while wearing backpacks, not carrying out daily checks on equipment and not ensuring a safety device which could stop a lift in an emergency was properly installed.

The prosecution was asking the court for a one-year jail term for Cettour and a fine of £55,500 (75,000 euros) for SAEM.

At the start of the hearing a report from the French government was published into the circumstances of the incident aimed at ensuring no such thing happened again. Students and teachers on the trip, the skier who raised the alarm, the lift operator and first aiders were interviewed for it.

Nick Brookes, Kieran’s father, told the court then: ‘More has to be done to stop such a thing ever happening again.

‘We have had to live through this every day since the accident. It is a struggle to keep things going. We just want our son and our lives back, but I know I can’t have that.’

In a family statement read to the court, the Brookes said: ‘The pain of losing Kieran is something we will always have to bear and nothing will ever bring him back.

‘Going through this criminal process and having to relive details of Kieran’s death has been incredibly difficult for all the family, but it will be some relief and comfort to us if, at the end of it all, we can point to something positive having come of this tragedy.

‘It is important for us that, where necessary, safety improvements are made so what happened to Kieran can never happen to someone else again and no family will have to go through what we have.’

This sort of activity had to happen ‘in a safe environment,’ the statement added.

Thomas Painta, SAEM’s lawyer, told the court the company did not recognise any criminal guilt in the matter. But it did recognise civil guilt.

And he said: ‘There is no proof Kieran Brookes had a backpack on when he got on the lift.’

Cettour’s lawyer Luc Hinterman said: ‘He was doing something that was an ordinary part of his job and could never have imagined that 14 seconds of doing this ordinary thing would result in a death.’

A civil case against the company’s insurers is expected to be heard at a later date.