GRIEVING MUM AND DAD OF LITTLE GIRL KILLED IN PEARL’S RUNAWAY RANGE ROVER TRAGEDY OPEN THEIR HEARTS PARENTS
The full heartbreaking interview
HOW THEY’RE TRYING TO REBUILD THEIR LIVES WITH BEAUTIFUL NEW BABY BEATRIX:
ALL Paul and Gemma Black wanted was justice for their beautiful little girl Pearl. But they’ve been left with none.
And the cruel heartbreak the couple suffered when their daughter was taken from them in the most tragic of circumstances has left them broken once more.
A year-long investigation involving the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has found that no-one can be held criminally accountable for Pearl’s death – on an archaic point of law.
Their daughter died on August 6, 2017, after a Range Rover rolled across a road and demolished a wall which fell onto her in Heolgerrig, Merthyr Tydfil.
All they have wanted is answers – the truth as to why their one-year-old daughter died and who was responsible.
They feel justice has not been done – and it’s torn them apart.
Now, as Paul and Gemma reel from this soul-destroying blow, they’ve spoken at length about how they feel about the owner of the car Andrew Williams and how the birth of their baby daughter has brought some much-needed joy into their lives.
At home in Merthyr, the couple are surrounded by a gallery of pictures of their one-year-old daughter Pearl.
Sitting on the sofa in the corner of their living room, the hurt is evident on the faces of Paul, 50, and Gemma, 38 – who continue to show astonishing strength and fortitude, despite suffering so much.
They said they can’t help the way they feel about the Range Rover’s owner Mr Williams.
The couple say they have received no contact from him before now, and there has been no apology for what has happened.
The Blacks came face-to-face with Mr Williams for the first time at the inquest into Pearl’s death on Thursday, but there was no contact at all.
Paul sat near Mr Williams in the court room. Gemma was at court but couldn’t bring herself to sit through the hearing.
Asked if he wanted to confront Mr Williams, Paul said: “I was too composed. It was just not worth it. It was not worth me breaking my composure. I would have let my family down if I had shouted at him.”
The couple now have to focus on their children – 20-month-old Ace and 12-week-old daughter Beatrix.
They are for now at least blissfully unaware of what their parents have been through. In later years they will come to know everything about their sister Pearl, whose nickname was Swirls, and the anguish her death has caused their parents.
On July 28 this year, a little ray of sunshine broke through the clouds and lit up their lives thanks to the birth of baby Beatrix, who shares the same middle name of Melody as her sister.
“The best thing that has come about through all this is the birth of our new baby Beatrix, which was a remarkable turn of events and has brought us an abundance of happiness,” said Paul. “However, it will never, ever stop or take away what has happened to us. Nothing at all ever, no amount of money, no amount of smiles from our two beautiful children will ever take away the horror that we have been through.” For Gemma it was important that they tried for a baby. “It was important for us to have another child. It was for me. It stopped me from falling into a big black hole, because I had to look after myself,” she said. “I had to make sure I was healthy and not distraught all the time, because I had a baby growing inside me. “We had to be Ace’s parents when I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning, or I didn’t want to see the world or open a blind. We’re still Ace’s parents. We’ve still got to feed him and make him laugh, but being pregnant was definitely a good thing for me because it was complete focus, a mental and physical focus. “I t w a s i mportant for us but also for Ace, as we didn’t want him to be an only child. Being older parents we didn’t want one child anyway, but especially after what happened to Pearl. I didn’t want him to be that kid whose sister died. I wanted him to grow up with siblings.
“He’ll never forget her. We’ll make sure of that. We say hello and good morning to her picture when we wake up.
“I wouldn’t want people to think that we’ve tried to replace Pearl. If I had 100 children we wouldn’t replace Pearl, but it’s lovely to have a little girl in the house again.”
It was, however, a difficult birth for Gemma.
“It was my third caeserean in three years,” she said. “Beatrix was born at 38 weeks. I can’t give birth naturally. She was in special care because she had difficulty breathing. But thankfully she was fine.
“Babies born by section, sometimes their airways don’t clear properly, so that all happened. And she was taken away.
“It just felt like, ‘How much more are we going to get thrown at us?’” said Paul.
A little over a week after Beatrix’s birth, on August 6, it was the first anniversary of Pearl’s death. Septem-
ber 28 would have been her third birthday.
“How do you deal with that all in the space of the same time?” said Paul. “Gemma gave birth to a beautiful child and six days later it was the anniversary of the death of Pearl. How does any person cope with that? You’re going through such a rollercoaster and juxtaposition of emotions – and then, bang, you’re hit with another one, the first anniversary of the death of your first child. How do you cope?”
The conflicting emotions, the maelstrom of feelings, set Paul back to the point where his mental health has suffered. For the time being at least he has had to stop working as a tattooist in an attempt to get himself back on track.
“We changed the name of the shop to Pearl’s Tattoo Emporium in her honour, but unfortunately I’ve suffered mentally and physically with everything that’s gone on,” he said.
“Since the birth of our beautiful Beatrix it just hit me. The way it has affected me as a person and our family is indescribable. I hope nobody has to go through what we’ve been through, because nobody will understand.
“The truth coming out now as to what has happened, people will see the heartache and the pain that something so avoidable has caused us. The happiness of our family just taken away.
“My goal is to get back to work, to get my tattoo studio sorted and my mental health back on track. I’ve got another mountain to climb with medical treatment.”
In the last year, Paul has been undergoing extensive tattooing sessions, which he admitted have become a form of recovery for him.
“I’ve used tattooing as my therapy,” he said. “It’s literally been therapy for me because when I sit in that chair, for that amount of time, be it five hours, seven hours, everything goes away.
“I get into a meditative state. When I’m getting tattooed it’s the only time that everything goes away.
“For me, I shut my eyes and I don’t feel the pain any more. It’s become a huge part of my recovery process. I’m nearly done now, I’m nearly covered.”
He did, however, confess that he did start cutting himself, but quickly stopped.
“When my head was shaved I did start to cut myself with a razor. I would stand in a mirror and experience the feeling of the razor going into my head so I could see the blood. I realised quickly that I was spoiling the tattoos.
“I’ve never self-harmed until I shaved my head, but I would imagine the tattooing is the closest thing that I would imagine someone who selfharms feels.
“But as I say, it does help me through it. There’s no blood. It’s nothing to do with the pain. It’s that purely meditative state that I get in when I’m being tattooed and I can sit for hours. All the other pain goes away.”
The former singer said he replays the moment Pearl was hit by the wall over and over in his mind every day. As a result he has been diagnosed with severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
“People see me walking down the street and they think I am confident because of this exterior and bravado, but I am absolutely crumbling inside,” he said.
“I defy any man living to see what I’ve seen. No man will see their child getting crushed to death in front of them. No man has seen what I’ve seen.”
He was forced to relive the tragic circumstances leading to his daughter’s death at the inquest this week and at one point could not bear to say the words out loud.
In his heartbreaking evidence he recounted the events leading up to the tragedy, and detailed the extraordinary lengths he went to in a bid to save his two children, Pearl and Ace.
He told the court how, when the vehicle careered towards him building up speed, he threw Ace into the road and tried to step in front of Pearl, but wasn’t quick enough to throw her as well.
“The Range Rover proceeded to crush her in front of me,” he said. “The weight of the wall. She was so small.
“I’d rather not go into details. There was so much blood.
“There was a lot of blood spraying. I could see the death just appearing on her face.
“I lifted the wall off her. I don’t know how I done it. I was saying: ‘Come back to daddy.’ She was literally limp and lifeless.
“I was screaming: ‘She’s gone, she’s gone, my poor baby girl.’ I was covered in blood.”
He told how he was so angry he started to smash up the Range Rover.
“There was a hammer lying on the wall,” he said. “I smashed every single window. I smashed the back window first. Smashed all the windows, the lights, the bonnet.
“I was engulfed with pure anger and rage, as I’m sure you can appreciate.
“In my mind, it was the vehicle had killed my little girl.”
In the 14 months since that day, Gemma said she still can’t bear to visit the scene where it happened near to her mother-in-law’s house.
“I haven’t been to my mother-inlaw’s house since last August,” said Gemma. “I can’t turn left out of the house to go up there.”
Paul said the hope that there would be justice for his beautiful little girl was one of the things keeping him going.
But they said they were “devastated” when they were told there would be no criminal prosecution against the Range Rover’s owner Mr Williams.
“We were distraught when the police told us,” said Paul.
“It was one of the things that was keeping me focused and positive in life – that there would be some sort of justice, some sort of recompense.
“Nothing will ever make up for what has happened. No amount of justice would have been right for what has happened to Pearl, but it was a huge blow.”
The inquest at Pontypridd
Coroner’s Court ruled that Pearl’s death was an accident. The police investigation had found the car wasn’t secure, with the hand brake on the empty Range Rover not “sufficiently applied”.
Forensic collision investigator PC Gareth Davies told the inquest: “The hand brake wasn’t applied and it wasn’t in park [mode]. It was on two notches out of six.”
He also said the gear lever of the automatic vehicle was found to be between reverse and park.
The couple have now asked their solicitor to ask the CPS to review their decision not to prosecute.
Gemma and Paul are now campaigning for a change to the law, which they say has prevented a charge being brought.
“We’ve already made grounds to try and get the law changed,” said Gemma. “We’ve had a meeting with our local MP Gerald Jones and he’s very keen to take it on and to create a Private Member’s Bill that will be put through Parliament. We’re in the process of working through the logistics of this and how we go about this, so that’s ongoing.”
Paul is also planning to walk from Merthyr Tydfil to the Houses of Parliament in memory of Pearl.
“Because there is this glitch in the law we now have to make sure there is a change in the law that this doesn’t happen again,” Paul said.
“I said if I have to walk to Parliament to get this changed, I will. But I am now going to walk to Parliament as this is another focus to keep me going in Pearl’s name.
“People who are responsible for vehicles should be aware they could be responsible for taking other people’s lives.”
Gemma added: “It’s not going to help our case. But hopefully it will never happen to anyone else, but if it does at least the law will be on their side.”
In a statement, the CPS has said: “The CPS carried out a thorough review of the evidence and concluded the case failed to meet the evidential test for prosecution. We have explained the reasons behind this decision to Pearl’s family and our thoughts remain with them.”
Gemma and Paul have thanked South Wales Police who they said went “beyond the call of duty”.
Paul said: “I want to stress the tireless efforts the police have put in,” said Paul. “We couldn’t have asked for any more. They went above and beyond the call of duty.
“It’s taken a year to come to this point. It’s been so long because they’ve been exploring every avenue to bring criminal charges.”
After Pearl’s death it was striking how the community of Merthyr threw their arms around the couple. It’s a firm, loving embrace they still feel today.
“The support and the coming together of the borough and people in general has been incredible,” said Paul.
Family and friends have all played and continue to play their part, while the kindness of strangers still catches them off guard.
“If there are any positives to be taken it’s that we have a fantastic network of family and friends – and the wider community of people who don’t know us,” Gemma said.
“We’ve had huge gestures of kindness. We still have people knocking the door giving us things for the kids. When Beatrix was born a lady brought a cuddly toy. She’s the same lady who brought us Easter eggs a few months earlier. It’s unbelievable. We’re always in people’s thoughts. Paul added: “A lady knocked the door one day and said ‘I don’t know what to say to you. I can’t bake so I bought you a cake from Marks and Spencers.’ “I have a lot of friends in the motorcycling community who put on a lot of events for charity, and they’ve saved my life basically. People like that have saved my life.” In May, the Merthyr Rising Festival paid tribute to Pearl by naming the main stage after the little girl. “Naming that stage after Pearl at Merthyr Rising and introducing The Alarm was a massive moment for me. “We always said Pearl’s name was going to be up in lights and she was. That was a special moment,” he said. Paul and Gemma Black now hope that the result of the inquest, although a bitter pill to swallow, will at least allow them to move forward with their lives. Paul said: “We are devastated and heartbroken, but we have to hold it together for our family. We are not going to let this break us. “Hopefully the inquest will be a milestone so we can say ‘right that is that, let’s move on to the next phase’, which is still carrying on Pearl’s name and getting the law changed. “Anybody who is responsible for a vehicle should know and should understand the fact that they could be responsible for taking somebody else’s life. And that is now our main goal. That is my main goal in life.” Wales On Sunday tried to contact Mr Williams for a comment, but he did not respond to our request.