Girl, 11, was killed in fog crash horror
Inquest told how HGV ploughed into family car
AGIRL of eleven died when an HGV ploughed into two crashed cars moments after they had collided in heavy fog on a motorway, an inquest heard.
Iman Zainab Javed, from Rochdale, was a rear seat passenger in her father’s VW Sharran when it was hit first by a Renault Clio and then by a Volvo truck on the M61 near Preston at around 10.30pm on January 23, 2017.
The youngster, a pupil at Norden Community Primary School, died at the scene of face and neck injuries.
The driver of the Clio, Neil Hodson, said he only had a ‘second or two to react’ when he suddenly hit a thick bank of fog, Preston Coroner’s Court heard.
The driver of the Volvo lorry, Roderick Macleod, from Glasgow, said in a statement read out by the coroner: “I hit a blanket of fog.
“It’s not like anything I have experienced before. It was like being wrapped in a blanket.”
He said that when he emerged from the fog bank he recalled five or six vehicles on the hard shoulder.
“I saw a woman with a baby in her arms standing in lane one. I had to do everything to avoid them,” said Mr Macleod, who added there was ‘no indication’ there were any other vehicles remaining in the carriageway.
He said he ‘could not have stopped’.
“I was in total shock,” he added.
Iman’s mother Khaldah Javed, the front seat passenger in the Sharran, said in a statement read to the court the fog was so bad she couldn’t see the bonnet.
She recalled her husband saying he was going to pull over and that he slowed to 10 or 15mph.
“As soon as my husband said he was going to pull over there was a bang to the back of the car and we came to a stop,” she said.
She recalled her daughter saying her chest was hurting and told her it was ‘going to be okay’, the inquest heard.
She got out of the Sharran and could see people walking towards the car.
Mrs Javed recalled shouting ‘no’ but could not recall the collision.
She said she saw a car which had hit the central reservation which ‘looked quite bad’ although she wasn’t sure at first it was her own car. She saw her daughter ‘slumped over’ but then she was moved away.
“A short time later a police officer told me my beautiful daughter had died,” she said.
A police investigation concluded that the HGV was doing 52mph when it hit the two vehicles and that the Clio was travelling at ‘at least’ 57mph when it hit the Sharran, the inquest heard.
Pathologist Alison Armour conducted a post mortem examination and concluded Iman died from severe facial injuries and a fractured cervical spine (neck).
The drivers of the Clio and HGV weren’t hurt. Iman’s father was seriously hurt and it is thought he remains in hospital.
Preston area coroner Richard Taylor, recording a narrative verdict, said: “Iman Zainab Javed died on January 23, 2017, on the M61 at Bamber Bridge, Preston, from injuries sustained as a rear seat passenger in a vehicle which was struck from behind in heavy fog.”