Our world is a darker place now Parents’ grief for daughter, one, killed by runaway 4x4
‘A massive hole in our hearts’
A TODDLER was killed by a runaway Range Rover as she walked to her grandparents’ house with her father.
Pearl Black, who would have been two next month, was hit by the 4x4 as it hurtled downhill across a road from a sloping drive where it had been parked.
Her father Paul – a former contestant on BBC talent show The Voice – tried frantically to pull her from the path of the vehicle, which also demolished a wall. He was carrying Pearl’s eight-month-old brother Ace, who suffered minor injuries.
Mr Black, 49, was unhurt but Pearl sustained serious injuries. She was airlifted to hospital but died.
Yesterday Mr Black and his wife Gemma, 37, told of their grief at the tragedy, which occurred on Sunday lunchtime half a mile from the family’s home in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. ‘Pearl was every single star in every single sky, she was as bright as the stars,’ they said in a tribute.
‘When she looked at you with those eyes and she would melt your heart. She was the reddest pearl in the ocean and the sweetest melody ever written.
‘She was the greatest dancer and she has left a massive hole in our hearts, the world will be a darker place without her. She was the reason we all lived.’ Mr Black wrote on Twitter: ‘My life is on hold indefinitely. Thank you for all the kind thoughts and messages. I’m a broken man. Our beautiful family has been savaged.’
He had been to a play park with his children and was heading to their grandparents’ house. They were four doors away when the 17-year- old Range Rover ploughed into them. Police suspect its handbrake may have failed. The vehicle was towed away and is being examined for faults.
Police have interviewed the vehicle’s owner.
Mrs Black, a former speechwriter, was at home at the time of the crash. Yesterday residents on the small estate told of their shock.
One said: ‘Paul threw himself into the way to try to save her. It was very brave but he didn’t have a chance against such a heavy vehicle. They are a lovely family. Paul is well known in the area because he was on The Voice. He does a lot of singing around here.’
A neighbour said: ‘The dad was holding his girl’s hand and carrying his little boy. It hit her with such force. It carried on rolling and demolished the wall of a house. It only rolled 30 yards at the most but what happened is devastating.’
Another said: ‘The 4x4 vehicle came from the drive opposite and crashed into Pearl before hitting the wall. It was one of those awful wrong-place wrong-time things. A minute earlier and they wouldn’t have been there.’
Mr Black appeared on The Voice in 2014, when he joked he was the son of judge and fellow Welshman Tom Jones.
He convinced another judge, Will.i.am, that he was from the same town in New Jersey as Frank Sinatra.
Mr Black, who also works as a tattooist, had his own Elvis tribute band and was friends with the late Visage pop star Steve Strange.
A spokeswoman for South Wales Police said: ‘It is known that an unoccupied Range Rover which had been parked in a driveway, rolled down the hill and collided with a wall which collapsed.’