Little Girl & Mum Killed After Tipper Truck Smashes Into Cars & Pedestrians During School Run

A young girl was among four people killed yesterday when a truck ran out of control near a school.

Pupils were returning home from lessons when the driver of the gravel lorry careered round a corner and crashed into vehicles and pedestrians.

The dead girl is thought to have been walking with her mother and grandmother. The other victims were inside a car.

At least four more people were injured in the carnage and taken to hospital, one of them by air ambulance.

Witnesses said the truck driver appeared to be having brake trouble when he lost control on a steep hill on the northern outskirts of Bath at around 4pm.

Emergency services based themselves at the primary school, which will be closed in the morning, leading to fears the girl might have been a pupil there.

The truck hit a number of vehicles and at least two pedestrians as it careered down Lansdown Lane in the Upper Weston area of the Somerset city.

A 66-year-old woman who lives opposite the scene of the crash said: ‘My whole house shook with a terrific noise like a bomb going off. I rushed outside and it was just mayhem. The lorry was on its side on top of a black car, and I was told three people in the black car had died. The gravel from the lorry was all over the road and the fire brigade arrived and cut the bodies free from the wreckage. The lorry had hit lots of other cars on its way down the hill, and I was told there was a grandmother, mother and daughter walking along the pavement and that the little girl had been killed when the lorry mounted the pavement.’

The woman added that there were injured people wherever she looked, adding: ‘The lorry seemed to have had brake failure and it came to rest on the corner. It demolished the walls of all the houses on the corner and two workmen said the driver shot through the windscreen. It was an accident waiting to happen. I have complained to the police before about these heavy lorries going up and down the lane. It is too steep and too narrow for such big, heavy vehicles and there is supposed to be a 6ft width restriction on the lane but they just ignore it.’

Source: DailyMail