The victims of this tragic accident were the entire family of an 8-year-old boy. Two vehicles were involved: a Ford Transit Van and the family’s Citroen Saxo. The Saxo left the road and careered into a tree and killed his mother, who was just in her late 20s, and two of her sons and her partner, in his early 30s, who were all pronounced dead at the scene.
The boy’s grandfather was by his bedside Saturday night at James Cook University Hospital, comforting him, after he learned of the deaths of all members of his family.
The family were thought to have been heading from their native North-East to the Blackburn area of Lancashire to visit relatives when an incident happened on a stretch of the A1 trunk road at Great Fencote, near Catterick, North Yorkshire, on Saturday morning.
Police have not released any details of the victims, saying that not all relatives have been informed but already floral tributes have been fixed to metal railings outside the family home in Hebburn, South Tyneside.
Bunches of cellophane-wrapped bouquets of carnations and roses had been fixed to a garden fence by tearful visitors shocked by the tragedy.
It was “nothing short of a miracle”, the police said, that this little youngster survived when the car he was traveling in speared off the road and hit a tree. Sadly, the rest of his family didn’t make it.
