Boy, 9, died after truck ‘slipped’ down ‘sheer drop’ at family farm

09.04.2024 17:24

«Metro UK»

'I just pushed him as far away from the truck, because I didn't want him to go under the truck.'

A nine-year-old boy died after his family’s truck hit him as it ‘slipped’ down a slope.

Tomos Rhys Bunford died in his family’s field in Rhondda Cynon Taf, south east Wales, on September 6, 2021.

His dad Rhys was driving the 4×4, a Mitsubishi L200 Warrior, while towing a water bowser to take water to calves in their fields when the vehicle started to slip.

Mum Louise was also in the car along with other son Gethin and baby Clemmie.

Rhys, who worked for a skip hire firm, said he farmed ‘as a hobby’ as he grew up on a farm and he wanted his children to experience ‘what he grew up with’.

But he ordered his family to get out of the vehicle as it was heading towards a ‘sheer drop’ of 16ft (5 metres).

Heartbroken parents of nine-year-old boy sobbed today as they told an inquest how he was killed in a freak accident with their farm truck. Talented rugby player Tomos Bunford was crushed to death under their pick-up track as the family-of-five were feeding their cattle together. The three children and parents had been travelling in the pick-up taking water to their cows when it started to slide down the field. Dad Rhys, 36, and mum Louise, 38, feared the truck towing the water bowser would fall over the cliff at the end of the farmland - and told their children to get out. WALES NEWS SERVICE — His mum tried to push him away from the truck (Picture: Wales News Service)

A nine-year-old boy was killed in front of his horrified parents when he was hit by their truck on the family farm. Talented rugby player Tomos Bunford was killed in a freak accident as the family-of-five went out to feed their cattle. The three children and parents had been travelling in the family pick-up truck taking water to their cows when it started to slide down the field. Dad Rhys, 36, and mum Louise, 38, feared the truck towing the water bowser trailer would fall over the cliff at the end of the farmland - and told their children to get out. Pictured here is Tomos? grave on the family farm. WALES NEWS SERVICE — He died at his family’s farm in 2021 (Picture: Wales News Service)

Louise Bunford told the inquest into Tomos’s death that she ‘jumped out and I pushed [him] just to get him out of the truck’.

‘I just pushed him as far away from the truck, because I didn’t want him to go under the truck,’ she added.

‘I jumped out with baby on my chest. At that point [the water bowser] had started already jack-knifing.’

Louise said the truck hit her and she was ‘under the wheels’, and that the family had no previous concerns about the route, having driven the same way ‘every week’.

A Health and Safety Executive report found the vehicle was overall ‘structurally in a reasonable condition’, but the ‘trailer brakes were in poor condition’.

Tomos was hit by the vehicle after the water bowser jack-knifed, and his cause of death was recorded as ‘blunt force injury to the chest and abdomen’.

In conclusion, assistant coroner Gavin Knox said Rhys had ‘lost control in fear of his family falling off the steep drop-off at the bottom of the hill’.

He said the loss of control was due to a combination of factors, including the ‘steepness of the slope in the field’ and ‘mismatched and unsuitable tyres’.

Mr Knox ruled Tomos’s death as accidental.

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