Mont-Tremblant gondola victim was military member; company says drill was on pre-approved path

The Quebec construction company implicated in the deadly gondola accident in Mont-Tremblant Sunday says its drill was moving along a pre-determined path approved by the site.

The chief executive of Forage M2P, Maxime Patry, confirmed his company’s drill was being operated by an employee normally acting as a subcontractor at the time of the incident.

Police say the machine first struck an unoccupied gondola car that was climbing Mont-Tremblant around 11:30 a.m. before it collided with a second gondola car occupied by a man and a woman, who were ejected.

Sheldon Johnson, 50, from Kingston, Ont., was killed. Johnson was identified by the Canadian Armed Forces Tuesday as a military member.

He was a member of the 5th Canadian Division and had served for 20 years, the military confirmed in a statement offering condolences to Johnson’s colleagues, family and friends.

The second occupant, a woman in her 50s, was in critical condition in a Montreal hospital. Police have not confirmed how the two were related, but Forage M2P described her as Johnson’s wife.

“Our hearts go out to the relatives of the victim and his wife who were in one of the local gondola lifts which was struck, while moving, by the mast of a drill that an employee worked to move from site via a trail prescribed by the owner of Mont-Tremblant,” said Patry in a news release.

WATCH: One dead, another injured in gondola crash at Quebec’s Mont-Tremblant

Forage M2P called it an “isolated incident” that could have been caused either by “human error, communication or mechanical failure.”

“It would be clearly premature, even reckless, to put forward any hypothesis whatsoever to explain this accident,” said Patry.

The company president said the employee who was operating the equipment had to be hospitalized after suffering “severe nervous shock.”

Forage M2P says it will offer psychological support to all employees who may need it.

A spokeswoman for Quebec’s workplace health and safety board (CNESST) says the gondola will remain out of service while the agency investigates.

—With files from The Canadian Press