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