British skier held after American is killed in accident

A British tourist was in custody in Colorado facing possible manslaughter charges yesterday after a skiing incident in which he apparently collided with an American who later died of massive head injuries.

Robert Alexander Wills, 31, of Plymouth, was being held in the Summit County jail in Breckenridge, one of the most popular of Colorado's winter resorts in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, after his arrest on Sunday afternoon.

He is being held on suspicion of first-degree assault and reckless endangerment. The district attorney's office has until tomorrow to decide whether to bring more serious charges, such as manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide.

A local judge has set bail at $20,000 (£12,500), and Mr Wills's coworkers at LTC Scafolding in Plymouth were trying to raise the money yesterday.

Mr Wills's brother, Darren Wills, said: "There was no foul play. It was an accident. It is a case of two men colliding with each other."

Officials from the nearest British consulate, in Houston, Texas, said they were ready to provide standard assistance, such as finding a lawyer or arranging money transfers.

Whether Mr Wills was in Colorado alone or with a group of friends was not clear.

The victim's son, Ryan Henrichs, 28, said that his father, Richard, 56, who was visiting for the weekend from Illinois, was on a beginners' slope when another skier hurtled into him. The force of the collision sent Mr Henrichs flying out of his skis and into a tree about five feet away.

His son rushed to help his father, as did an off-duty doctor. During the 10 to 15 minutes it took for the ski patrol to arrive, his father still had a pulse, Mr Henrichs said. The older man, an advertising salesman from Naperville, outside Chicago, was flown to hospital in the Denver suburb of Englewood, where he was declared dead shortly afterwards.

Mr Wills was questioned by the ski patrol, but it was not immediately known what he told them. The Henrichs party had no contact with him. "I knew he was still in the area, but I didn't look at him," Mr Henrichs told the Rocky Mountain News.

Investigators from the local sheriff's department said they were still trying to establish what had happened.

It is rare for skiing accidents to lead to full-blown criminal prosecutions, but Colorado has been cracking down in recent years after a series of deaths in some of its most popular resorts. State law requires skiers and snowboarders to avoid hitting people below them on the slopes, and failure to do so can constitute, at the very least, a misdemeanour offence of reckless skiing.

A Texas man pleaded no contest to criminally negligent homicide in 1989 and served 30 days in jail after he killed a girl aged 11 at a Colorado resort. A lift operator from Vail, Colorado, was convicted, also of criminally negligent homicide, and served 90 days in jail in 2001.