LED TO DEATH

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 215, 8 June 1935, Page 18

LED TO DEATH

Faulty Sign-Post’s Deadly Work

The suggestion that two men who were .roasted alive in the cabin of a blazing lorry were led into a death trap by a sign-post was made at a double inquest at Oxford. The victims, whose blackened remains were identified by means of their watches, were: George Henry Edwards, 42, of Abercarn, Monmouthshire; and George Hughes 21, of Abercarn. The tragedy occurred when their lorry, which was only ten days old and had’just undergone brake adjustment, plunged into a ditch at Yarnton. Hughes was making his first journey with Edwards, who had promised him a job. An eye-witness of the tragedy, William Henry Hall, lorry-driver, of Hoelynyn, Bridgend, described a painful ordeal.

He said that when he stopped near Cheltenham another lorry pulled up, and one of the occupants asked him the way to Oxford. “He told me they were going to London,” added Hall, “and after I told him the way, he said, ‘O.K., we will follow you.’

“I had turned into the Oxford road • when I saw a light in my reflector, and then saw the other lorry was on fire. The front of it was in a ditch. “I went ap to the door and shouted, ‘Get out quick. She is on fire.’ “The driver turned his head and called, ‘I can’t, I can’t!' “The lorry was then well alight, and flames were coming through the floorboards inside the cab. “I tried to open the door, but it would not move. The load had pushed the cab over the bonnet and jammed the door. “The petrol tank burst into flames, which shot up three yards. They were W'.rse than any blow-lamp. It was like gas out of a tank. “I could do nothing more.” Replving to a juryman. Hall said be thought that a finger-post at a corner made the drivers think they should carrv straight on and not turn. A juryman: We have had 11 people in that, ditch in the last 14 years. Everyone has said they thought there was a cross-roads. ■ A verdict of "accidental death” was returned-