‘We continue to live in hope that one day we will get answers over Dean’s tragic death’ says family
THE family and friends of a man who died in a car accident are still holding out hope for answers as the 10th anniversary of his tragic death has come and gone.
Dean Spalding, a warehouse worker living in Lutterworth at the time, was just 27 when he was killed in a collision near Husbands Bosworth in 2010. He was on a Christmas shopping trip to Market Harborough on Saturday, December 4, when his Ford Focus was in collision with another vehicle on the A4304.
The smash also claimed the life of Rudolfne Meszaros, 57, from Measham, who was a passenger with her family in a red Volvo driven by her husband.
Mystery over the circumstances of the crash persist to this day, however, with the driver of a third vehicle - a silver VW Golf which Rudolf Meszeros told an inquest he had swerved to avoid after it braked suddenly and inexplicably in front of him - leaving the scene of the incident. Despite repeated public appeals involving Leicestershire Police and the Spalding family - and the inquest in 2012 ruling the two deaths the result of a tragic accident - the Volkswagen driver has never been traced.
Close friend Kevin Unitt, who grew up alongside Dean in their home village of Birstall, said the passage of time has been difficult for friends and family.
The 38-year-old, who is now married and working as a ranger for Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, in Scotland, said: “When I look at old photographs of Dean and I with all our friends in Birstall back in the day, it still feels surreal.
“Most of us are married now, some have children and a few like me have moved away from Leicestershire - some to the other side of the world.
“Now in our late 30s, we have had a myriad of experiences over the past decade, but Dean never got that chance.
“His life was taken, stopped in time forever, at 27. Missing his beloved Liverpool winning a Premier League title. Missing everything.”
He added: “A decade on, I am still trying to make some sense of it all. Words don’t really exist to describe my true feelings.
“It is especially hard to remember the past, your teenage years, soaking in what seemed like endless summer days, our entire lives ahead of us.
“That Dean – always ‘Spillo’ to many of us – would barely live another decade would be so inconceivable as to be completely alien - we didn’t really have fear, didn’t consider such things as death and endings, in the folly of youth.”
Remembering the aftermath of the fatal crash, Kevin said: “It seems so unbelievable that on December 4, 2010, he died on his way to get a Christmas present.”
Kevin paid his respects at the scene, and a few months later had a tattoo in remembrance of his old friend.
Kevin, who walked the length of Hadrian’s Wall to raise £700 for the Brake road safety charity, regrets that the pair had drifted apart in the years before Dean’s death.
“We’d lost touch in the preceding few years, for no good reason, and suddenly there would never be the chance to pick things up again,” he said. “I’d give anything for one more game of pool with him, one more of anything, but I know that can never be.”
Of the driver of the mystery third vehicle that failed to stop at the scene, he said: “They never came forward and, a decade on, so many questions remain unanswered.
“When I contacted the police last month they decided against issuing a renewed appeal, or making a statement, telling me the detective who led the investigation into the crash had since retired.”
Dean’s mother, Anne Spalding, said that, although it wouldn’t bring him back, gaining some answers might have brought some solace to the family.
“We have never given up hope that something else might turn up,” she said. “It still seems like yesterday but you have to carry on as Dean would want that.”
Another friend, James Snutch, also from Birstall, added: “It is strange to think he’s not here anymore. I often imagine what we would be doing. He was taken far too soon.”
A police spokesman confirmed that no new appeal would be issued.
“An investigation was carried out following the collision and a further appeal for information was issued several months later.
“All lines of inquiry were explored.”
He added: “Our condolences remain with Mr Spalding’s family.”