Four teenagers killed in Koszalin escape room tragedy in photo

Four of the five teenage girls who died in a fire while playing an escape room game in Poland have been identified by local media.

The group of girls, all aged 15, were celebrating a birthday when the tragedy occurred.

The Sun identified four of the five victims: Karolina Baraba, Wiktoria Julia Pietras, Gosia Tymieniecka and Amelia Wieczorek, and their Facebook profiles have since become memorial accounts.

Prosecutors in northern Poland on Sunday arrested and charged the man who designed an escape room-style entertainment site where five teenage girls were killed in a fire.

The man, identified only as Milosz S., was charged with intentionally creating a fire hazard and unintentionally causing the girls’ deaths, prosecutor Ryszard Gasiorowski said, adding that the heating system at the premises was faulty and there was no emergency escape route.

A court decision is expected Monday on prosecutors’ request to keep him in custody for three months while the case proceeds.

Firefighters from the city of Koszalin found the bodies of the victims on Friday after putting out a fire next to the locked room.

Prosecutors say a leak in a gas container inside a heater is the most likely cause of the fire.

Autopsies showed that the girls, who were school friends, died from carbon monoxide inhalation.

A young employee of the company was hospitalized with burns. He was to be questioned.

Lawyers for the accused man said he was “deeply shocked” by the deaths and expressed their sincere condolences to the families before prosecutors.

They said the 28-year-old denies the charges but was unable to answer prosecutors’ questions due to his distress.

If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison.

Earlier on Sunday, fire chief Leszek Suski stressed that the escape room of a private house in the city of Koszalin, where the 15-year-old girls died locked in a room celebrating a birthday, had no emergency escape route.

These are the first known deaths in an escape room, a form of entertainment that has been growing in Poland for five years.

Players in escape room games are locked in a room or building and must solve puzzles and find clues that will lead them to the key that will open the door.

Considered an intellectual challenge, the games are very popular among teenagers in Poland.

Authorities have shut down 13 escape room entertainment sites over security breaches and the prime minister on Sunday urged citizens to report the breaches to firefighters and police.

Police Chief Jaroslaw Szymczyk said other people had already posted critical comments online about the escape room site’s safety, but local authorities had not been informed.

At a memorial mass at Koszalin Cathedral, Bishop Edward Dajczak identified the girls by their first names: Julia, Amelia, Gosia, Karolina and Wiktoria.

He then led public prayers outside the house where they died.

People left hundreds of lights, toys and white flowers near the fence.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, accompanied by Suski and Szymczyk, spoke after a meeting where they discussed with other officials ways to improve security at entertainment venues.

Morawiecki called the girls’ deaths a “huge tragedy.”

Since Friday, more than 200 of Poland’s 1,100 escape rooms have been checked, revealing a number of security flaws that needed to be immediately fixed.

Authorities have ordered 13 of them to close.

– with AP