Mountain guide who led British schoolboy, 18, and his boarding school classmate to their deaths in an avalanche in the Alps is found guilty of manslaughter

Published: 19:08, 14 August 2026 | Updated: 19:10, 14 August 2026 A mountain guide who led a British schoolboy and his classmate to their deaths in an avalanche in the Swiss Alps has been found guilty of manslaughter. Archie Harvey, 18, was killed along with a friend from a Swiss boarding school while they were on a snowboard trip to the Wellhorn mountain at Meiringen near Bern in March 2023. The guide, who because of Swiss privacy laws was not named, was found guilty of negligent homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter for causing Archie's death and that of American student Emily Emily Franciose, also 18. The guide was on trial in Oberland Court along with a tour leader, who was found not guilty, after a two-day hearing that ended on Friday afternoon. The mountain guide was also given two years' probation while the tour leader was acquitted. Prosecutors told the hearing that although the avalanche risk the day of the tragedy was two out of five, the men 'breached their responsibility by taking the party to where the teenagers were killed, as warnings had been issued as the snow was soft and old. Archie and Emily, who was from the United States, were swept away after they had snowboarded down the slope for a second time and were then carried over the edge of a rock face and fell several hundred metres to their deaths. Archie Harvey (pictured), 18, was killed along with a friend from a Swiss boarding school while they were on a snowboard trip to the Wellhorn mountain at Meiringen near Bern in March 2023 The school in the town of Hasliberg is just a short distance away from the Gstelliwang ski slope on the Wellhorn mountain Prosecutors said the men had chosen an 'exceptionally dangerous route for the second descent, with part of the slope steeper than 40 degrees' and which was 'against the school's strict safety protocol' but both claimed they had followed guidelines and 'everything was correct'. Judge Jan Grunder justified the guilty verdict by saying that the mountain guide had exceeded the limits of permissible risk during the second descent. Video footage clearly showed the first route largely avoided the steep section but during the second descent, the mountain guide opened up an area that led the participants to ski down the steep slope. Following his death Archie's parents, property developer Philip Harvey and designer Sarah Metcalfe, who live in Kensington, west London, and Switzerland were said by friends to have been left 'devastated'. Archie was a pupil at the £57,000 a year Ecole d'Humanite international school in Hasliberg, close to Mt Wellhorn and his funeral was held in Switzerland. At the time a family friend told the Daily Mail: 'Phillip and Sarah are devastated; Archie's death has crushed them. It's the worst thing that can happen to any parent. After Archie's funeral his parents went overseas.' The guide, who because of Swiss privacy laws was not named, was found guilty of negligent homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter for causing Archie's death and that of American student Emily Francoise (pictured), also 18 Emily's body was not found for several days and her parents were in court for the verdict but Archie's were not. The guilty mountain guide – who is now unemployed – was fined 13,500 Swiss Francs and also ordered to pay 20,000 Swiss Francs to each of the parents. After the hearing, Emily's mother, Susan Franciose, said: 'No one wanted her dead. What happened was very sad but it was never about the money. 'Instead what we want to do is continue what Emily started and raise money for charitable projects she began. 'She had such a positive influence on so many people's lives. It's all the more difficult to grasp that she's no longer here.'