“LET HER REST. SHE WAS ONLY A SIMPLE WAITRESS, DOING HER JOB TO EARN A LIVING. SHE WAS NOT TO BLAME.”
Nearly 500 people stood in the cold air of Sète to say goodbye to Cyane Panine — the 24-year-old who lost her life in the inferno at Le Constellation bar in Switzerland on New Year’s Eve. Cyane was not a celebrity, not a figure of power — just a seasonal bar worker with a gentle smile, serving champagne to pay her bills. In the final video recorded before the tragedy, she appears radiant, carried on a colleague’s shoulders, holding bottles decorated with sparklers as part of the venue’s festive ritual. No one imagined those sparkling lights would become the last image of her life.
Then, in seconds, celebration turned into hell. A spark reportedly caught the soundproof ceiling, thick smoke swallowed the basement, and escape routes became death traps. Witnesses describe a scene too horrifying to forget: music drowned by screams, bodies pushing through darkness — and Cyane, a young waitress, trapped between her duty and survival. Her father said she trusted her workplace completely, believed she was safe — a trust that cost her the chance to see 2026. The bar manager, who called her his “adopted daughter-in-law,” collapsed as he admitted he had failed to protect the children in his care.
Today Cyane rests in the seaside cemetery of Sète, far from the flames that stole her future. She was not the architect of that fatal show — only a girl working another shift like any other night.
Crans-Montana tragedy: separate investigations and serious charges against the Morettis
Two days ago, Swiss authorities questioned Jacques and Jessica Moretti in two separate hearings, as required in particularly sensitive cases. The couple, owners of Le Constellation in Crans-Montana, are now under investigation for multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter, arson, and negligent injury following the devastating New Year’s Eve fire that turned a night of celebration into disaster. Jacques has been arrested, while Jessica has been placed under house arrest.
Jacques described the moments immediately after the fire erupted, recounting his desperate attempts to save Cyane Panine, the 24-year-old waitress who died in the flames.
“I tried to resuscitate her for more than an hour,” he said, adding, “I raised her boyfriend like my own son. We tried together until the rescuers arrived and told us it was too late.”
Jessica, meanwhile, conveyed the drama of those chaotic moments, recalling an evening that had seemed calm at first.
“The night had begun without any warning signs,” she said, with only a few customers present until around 1 a.m., and no hint of the disaster to come.
According to the couple’s account, the fire started during the service of sparklers — small decorative candles placed on bottles to make the evening more spectacular. The young woman seen in videos, standing on a colleague’s shoulders while holding a bottle and a sparkler, was not a customer but one of the club’s waitresses.
This detail radically changed the perspective on the incident, highlighting the risks linked to certain practices at the venue, which had already been flagged in the past by authorities. Jessica reportedly explained:
“It wasn’t something we always did. It wasn’t the first time, but I never stopped it — and I never ordered it either.”
She also described how sparks from the sparklers reached the soundproofing panels on the ceiling, causing the flames to spread rapidly.
“I sensed a movement in the crowd, and immediately afterward I saw an orange light in the corner of the bar.”
Within minutes, the situation spiraled out of control. The venue was ordered to evacuate, firefighters were called, and her husband received an emergency message:
“There’s a fire at Constel, come immediately!”
Jessica described what happened as “the tragedy of my life,” reflecting on the irreversible trauma caused by an event that began as a celebration and ended in catastrophe — with the girl in the helmet at the center of an episode destined to mark Crans-Montana forever.
