Among the cherished photographs that remain of their beloved daughter, one professional portrait holds particular significance for grieving parents Jerome and Astrid Panine. This image captures the extraordinary beauty of Cyane Panine, the 24-year-old French waitress who tragically lost her life in the devastating fire that engulfed the Le Constellation bar in the Swiss Alpine resort of Crans-Montana on New Year's Eve. In the dark weeks that have followed the catastrophe which claimed forty lives and left over a hundred people with serious burn injuries, her parents have clung tightly to this portrait, desperately attempting to block out other, more harrowing images from that terrible night.
An Unbearable Image Circulates Globally
Speaking exclusively this week, Jerome and Astrid Panine have made clear that the most unbearable photograph to emerge is one that has made headlines worldwide. It shows their daughter Cyane, wearing a promotional crash helmet from the champagne brand Dom Perignon, sitting on the shoulders of a colleague while clutching bottles of champagne plugged with lit sparklers. Investigators believe these sparklers ignited highly flammable soundproofing foam on the bar's ceiling.
The painful implication that Cyane – dubbed 'La Fille au Casque' or 'the girl in the helmet' – was somehow responsible for the inferno is compounding the family's profound and unending grief. No matter that the young woman was reportedly following orders from one of the bar's owners to 'get the atmosphere going'. This week, at their home in Sete in the south of France, her parents spoke out in the hope of reclaiming their daughter's memory as someone who 'shone and captivated' rather than as a poster girl for a disaster.
Remembering a Vibrant Life
Jerome and Astrid recall Cyane as a happy, bright, and hard-working young woman. As a child, she adored horse riding, playing with her dogs, and made friends with ease during the family's frequent international travels. Aged nine, she moved to Australia with her parents and elder sister Eoline for six months. At eleven, she embarked on an extraordinary round-the-world sailing adventure with her family, a UNESCO-backed expedition to promote water conservation.
'Cyane was spontaneous, radiant and full of heart,' says her mother Astrid, a 64-year-old photographer. 'She possessed a beauty that went beyond the physical. She embodied it. She trusted people without the slightest suspicion. She paid the ultimate price for this with her life.'
Her father Jerome, a 59-year-old hydrologist and water conservation expert, describes her as 'such a vital presence'. 'I cannot accept that my daughter is remembered only as the girl with the helmet, with flares in her hands,' he states emphatically.
Contempt for the Bar Owners
Alongside paying tribute to their child – who was born in 2001 and named Cyane for the colour of her eyes and the clear blue Mediterranean waters – the couple express deep contempt for the French owners of Le Constellation, Jacques and Jessica Moretti. They view statements from the Morettis with profound scepticism. Since the disaster, Jacques Moretti, a 49-year-old convicted pimp and fraudster who has served prison time, has likened Cyane to a 'stepdaughter', while his 40-year-old wife Jessica, a former actress and model, has described her as being like 'a little sister'.
Both owners face charges of manslaughter, bodily harm and arson, all by negligence, and insist they too are grieving Cyane's death. Due to his criminal record, Mr Moretti is being held in pre-trial detention, while his wife has been forced to wear an electronic tag as the investigation continues. They face up to twenty years in prison if found guilty.
Questions Over Employment and Safety
For the Panine family, such statements are particularly hard to stomach given that Cyane had complained to them about being forced to work long hours without breaks, leaving her physically and mentally exhausted. According to the family's lawyer, Sophie Haenni, Cyane was not on familiar terms with the Morettis, addressing them with the formal 'vous' rather than the informal 'tu'.
Ms Haenni reveals that Cyane did not have a formal employment contract and had previously contacted workers' protection services over her employment conditions with the Morettis. The lawyer also claims Cyane received no safety training and was unaware the sound-insulation foam on the ceiling – fitted by Jacques Moretti himself a decade ago – was highly flammable. She was simply told to put on the crash helmet, which would have prevented her from seeing the catastrophic events unfolding around her.
'Cyane is without question a victim,' Ms Haenni asserted last week. She is representing the family at a criminal inquiry in the Swiss town of Sion, where allegations include that a basement fire exit was locked on the night of the blaze and that renovations were carried out without correct permissions. It has emerged that no fire safety inspections had been conducted at the bar since 2019, despite laws requiring annual checks.
The Final, Fateful Night
Jerome and Astrid struggle to comprehend how their happy-go-lucky daughter, raised with such love and care, could have died in such awful circumstances. She was not even meant to be at Le Constellation that night. Cyane, who travelled to Crans-Montana in late November, started work on the morning of New Year's Eve at another of the Morettis' businesses, the gourmet burger restaurant Le Senso, before being sent to the popular ski bar.
For most of the evening she worked on the ground floor, welcoming guests and directing them to tables which required a minimum spend of around £900. Many patrons were sent to the basement bar, which Jacques Moretti had renovated in 2015, allegedly narrowing the basement staircase from three metres to just one.
Not long after 1am on January 1st, Jessica Moretti asked Cyane to go to the basement to help with a large champagne order. According to an account she gave investigators, Mrs Moretti encouraged Cyane to 'get the atmosphere going' by putting on the helmet. Other staff donned Guy Fawkes masks and placed sparklers in champagne bottles – a regular theatrical display at the bar.
Catastrophe Unfolds
Mobile phone footage from those final seconds shows Mrs Moretti at the back of a crowd of cheering revellers gathered around Cyane as she is held aloft by 27-year-old barman Matthieu Aubrun. Mrs Moretti was reportedly filming as the first flames erupted on the ceiling above Cyane.
According to Louise, the sole employee to escape without injury: 'There were seven or eight of us in that column carrying bottles. Cyane led the way, perched on Matthieu's shoulders, just like she'd done before. Everyone was in costume.' Cyane, blinded by the helmet, appears tragically unaware of the danger above her.
As flames raced across the foam insulation, groups of young people continued singing along to music. A couple of teenagers tried to smother the flames with clothing before fleeing. The time was 1.26am. Louise recalls: 'We lost between 30 and 35 seconds. With the music playing, people weren't yelling 'fire!' We had our backs turned and couldn't see it.'
A Deadly Bottleneck
The crucial 'pre-evacuation time' – the seconds between the onset of disaster and the realisation of the need to escape – proved fatal at Le Constellation. Smoke and heat spread rapidly, creating a 'flash-over' where the entire room exploded into flames. By then, Jessica Moretti had already left the bar. According to lawyers for victims' families, she has told investigators she shouted 'everyone out' and appears to have been one of the first to leave before calling the fire department and her husband.
She is said to have been caught on CCTV carrying the till with the night's takings. Many of those left behind tried to escape up the narrow basement staircase simultaneously, creating a deadly bottleneck. An investigating source estimates around 85% of the dead were trapped on the tiny staircase, which collapsed into the basement.
As staff, Cyane would have known about a second door that should have offered an escape route. She and several others attempted to flee through it, unaware it had been locked. The Morettis insist it was a 'service door' rather than a fire exit. Cyane's parents, tortured by thoughts of their daughter's final moments, claim it was locked to prevent party-goers sneaking in without paying. 'If the door had been open, maybe there wouldn't have been deaths,' says Jerome.
A Life Cut Short
Mr Moretti claims he was the one who broke down the door, which was 'locked from the inside and on a latch', and found Cyane suffocating among a pile of bodies. He says he pulled her out with the help of her boyfriend, Jean-Marc, who carried Cyane to a nearby bar and tried in vain to resuscitate her.
For her parents, these terrifying final minutes stand in agonising contrast to Cyane's happy, sun-filled childhood, particularly the family's three-and-a-half-year sailing adventure. They set off from the French Riviera in 2012 to encourage educational links and discussions about water conservation, a journey that took them across the Atlantic, up the Amazon, through the Panama Canal and on to the Seychelles and Madagascar.
After returning to Sete, the family opened an award-winning micro-brewery where Cyane sometimes worked. As she entered her teens, her remarkable beauty became evident. In 2021, she was chosen for an art project featuring portraits of 1,000 women in Sete, and that same year her mother arranged a professional photoshoot with a friend, photographer Vincent Chambon, who remembers her as 'strikingly beautiful'.
A Final Farewell
For Jerome and Astrid, the story of their daughter's life races towards that terrible moment behind the locked door at Le Constellation, where it was cut short with what they now describe as 'unimaginable suddenness'. Last weekend, after bringing Cyane back to Sete, Jerome helped carry his daughter's coffin into a memorial service attended by 1,000 people. Astrid, sobbing uncontrollably, wore a bright blue scarf over her black mourning clothes in remembrance.
She describes her daughter as 'an elusive butterfly; the kind one longs to catch and immortalise,' before pleading for how Cyane should be remembered amidst a tragedy that has left so many parents utterly bereft. Not as 'La Fille au Casque', but as a 'real and profound' reminder of 'all young people who are cut down in their prime'.
