Parents of terminally ill child sue after son dies following make-a-wish-style ride

Wed, 30 Jul 2014

Some stories are so sad and depressing, they make you want to go back to bed and pull the covers over your head. This is one such story. 14-year-old Raphael Wittman was suffering from an unspecified form of terminal cancer when he was invited by the children's cancer charity Kinder Krebs Hilfe to a charity drive organized by Porsche Forum Austria. During the drive, the Porsche Boxster Wittman was riding in was involved in a head-on collision. Both of his legs were broken and he bit off his tongue in the wreck. He died seven weeks later, in a Vienna hospital. Now, his father is suing the charity, claiming that the accident robbed his son of the will to live.

"The accident set off a chain of events starting with the doctors putting him on new medication for the cancer he had. He was always a fighter, but suddenly he was saying that he was not going to fight any more," Franz Wittman told Austria's Kurier, according to The Guardian. "We would have had a wonderful last time together [on vacation] but it never happened because of the accident."

Father and son were originally planning to go to Tenerife to spend time together, although those plans were cancelled following the accident.

Franz Wittman is angry that in the weeks following the accident and his son's July 5 passing, the family was not contacted by the Porsche Forum or Kinder Krebs Hilfe, aside from the gift of an iPhone given to Raphael from the driver that was behind the wheel, The Daily Mail reports. Any compensation from the legal action, Wittmann says, is "not for me, it's for my son."

"We are speechless," Karin Benedik, the head of Kinder Krebshilfe, told The Guardian. "We helped this family, and now our name is being dragged through the mud. We don't want to say any more because we need to see what the accusations are, but as far as we're concerned we were not the organizers and are not responsible."

Wittman's lawyer, Dr. Astrid Wagner, seems to think her client is on sound legal footing.

"It was a charity event but these things should be properly organized and that means that the should be insurance as well as anything else," Wagner told The Mail.

By Brandon Turkus