Golfer, 16, pictured with Rory McIlroy named as first victim of Swiss fire as grim task of identifying 47 victims begins
The fire ripped through a packed Swiss ski resort nightclub during New Year's Eve celebrations
Galeppini’s Instagram features a pic of him posing with pro Rory McIlroy, captioned “Pic of the year”.
The Italian Golf Federation announced the death of Galeppini, saying it mourned a “young athlete who embodied passion and authentic values”.
It said: “In this time of great sorrow, our thoughts go out to his family and all those who loved him.”
The 16-year-old is described on the World Amateur Golf Ranking website as an Italian junior golfer who “loves to golf, compete and eat”.
The page states that Galeppini was based in Dubai and played as part of the Italian national team.
He was “widely regarded as a promising young talent”, and was originally from Genoa, according to Golf Digest.
In 2025 alone he had competed across the UAE, Bahrain, Italy and England.
More than 100 people were injured in the blaze, which took hold as around 200 revellers welcomed the new year at Le Constellation bar.
Experts are using dental and DNA records to try identify the deceased, but the severity of the burns is delaying identification.
Terrified New Year’s Eve revellers were “screaming and running” for their lives, as the inferno scorched the venue, burning alive many people trapped inside.
Survivors as young as 15, have been taken to hospitals across Switzerland and abroad to France, Germany, Italy and Belgium.
Valais hospital activated its disaster plan, receiving 60 of the injured, many with third-degree burns.
Other families now face an “unbearable” wait for victims to be identified after officials said the process will “take time” – and potentially last several days.
The painful task of identifying bodies began on Friday as parents of missing youths begged for news of their loved ones.
Laetitia Brodard said she had not seen her 16-year-old son Arthur Brodard, since he set off to celebrate at the Swiss bar on New Year’s Eve.
Brodard told BFT TV news: “I’ve been looking for Arthur for more than thirty hours, but there’s no news. It’s an unbearable wait.
“I won’t stop searching, I won’t give up, to know if my son is alive or if he’s gone to the other side.
She said her family is “doing everything we can to get answers”.
Brodard continued: “Today, if he’s in the hospital, I don’t know which hospital. If he’s in a morgue, I don’t know which morgue, which country, which canton.
“He could be anywhere. I’ve been in Crans-Montana for 30 hours without any news of my child.”
The mother said Arthur and 10 school friends had booked a table in Le Constellation to mark the start of 2026, but only one of the group has been found.
Referring to the Swiss authorities, Brodard said: “There are no words, they can’t answer our questions because they don’t know anything.”
Crans-Montana’s mayor Nicolas Feraud said that “the first objective is to assign names to all the bodies”, adding the process could take days.
Mathias Reynard, head of the region’s government said: “All this work needs to be done because the information is so terrible and sensitive that nothing can be told to the families unless we are 100 percent sure.”
Countries including Italy, France and Australia have said some of their nationals are missing.
The first injured teen to be identified was FC Metz youth footballer Tahirys Dos Santos.
The 19-year-old was “severely burned”, the football club said, and is now receiving treatment in Germany.
Shocking footage shows terrified partygoers running out of the bar as its dancefloor is engulfed in flames.
Eyewitness Bastien Frema, 20, said: “People were screaming. I saw people with burnt clothing shredded, hanging off them.
“People were yelling, trying to get help. We couldn’t do anything.”
Another said: “It was mayhem. People were so badly burned. No one knew what was happening.”
The cause of the fire is under investigation, but it is being treated as an accident rather than an attack.
Another witness named Emma has claimed the fire seemed to start after people celebrated with champagne bottles that contained candles.
She told BFM TV: “Some of the bottles were near the ceiling and it caught fire. The whole ceiling was in flames and the fire spread really fast. It happened in seconds. We ran outside, screaming and crying.”
Another witness claimed she saw the ceiling catch fire after a sparkler was lit in a bottle being carried by a waiter.
A local police spokesman confirmed that “dozens of pyrotechnic devices in bottles” lined tables in the basement of the bar.
