‘We’re angry – we don’t want memories, we want Tom’
ON THE day Tom Channon died his father John was preparing to go away on a business trip to Azerbaijan.
Tom’s brothers, Harry and James, had come home for lunch after playing ten- nis nearby. At around 1pm two South Wales Police officers walked up the long drive to their home and knocked on the door.
When John answered the door he asked: “Is it Tom or Ceri?”
The 67-year-old, an international development economist, said: “I knew, when I opened that door. I just knew it must be one of those two. And they said, ‘Are you the father of...’ and as soon as they said it, that was it.”
John was then left to phone his wife Ceri, who was at work.
When she answered he told her to go and find her most trusted friend in work. He wanted someone to be with her when she heard.
“It’s one of those things you will never, ever forget,” she said. “I said ‘What’s happened? tell me, what’s happened?’ And he said, ‘No, go and be with (her colleague)’ and I put it on loudspeaker and he said, ‘It’s Tom, he’s been involved in a really bad accident and he didn’t make it.’
“And it was just incredible. I could not believe it.”
Tom Channon, 18, fell from a 70ft raised walkway in the early hours of July 12 after becoming separated from his group on a night out.
He is the third person from the UK to die at the Eden Roc complex this year.
Mum Ceri Channon, 50, said the family have been left “angry” after what they see as an easily avoidable accident.
Just weeks before, 20-year-old Thomas Hughes, from Wrexham, also died after falling from a walkway at the complex.
In April, 19-year-old Natalie Cormack, from West Kilbride, Ayrshire, was killed while trying to climb from one balcony to another.
In the initial few hours after receiving the news, Ceri said they had very few details and were unaware how their son had died. She said: “The awful thing for us was that for the first six hours we had no clue as to how he died. Initially I was thinking had he gone on a boat trip?; had he had a heart attack on the beach? We didn’t know a thing really.”
John added: “If only we’d known very early on the exact details as we know them now that would have really helped enormously. We had no idea what to expect.”
Tom and his friends left the UK on the Tuesday evening and arrived in Magaluf on Wednesday. Later that day he watched Wimbledon at the hotel and then went into the town to watch a football match.
He became separated from his friends and made his way back to the hotel in the early hours of Thursday.
Speaking at the family home in Rhoose, near Barry, midwife Ceri said he was seen by a friend who was heading back who said Tom was “fine and didn’t look drunk”. It is believed that Tom went through an unlocked gate into the Eden Roc complex and stepped over a low wall, believing there was a garden on the other side, and fell 70ft. He was later discovered by a gardener at the complex who, John said, believed his son was “asleep”.
Ceri said: “It feels quite hard today. Because we’ve kept strong
right up until now, and I was just sitting in Tom’s bedroom and his case is still there unopened and unpacked and it is very, very hard today.”
Before the trip Ceri said her son had bought a new pair of flip-flops.
After all of his belongings were returned home, Ceri opened Tom’s case to find them still with their tag on – he never had a chance to wear them.
“We feel very, very angry because we don’t want memories,” she said. “We want Tom.”
She added: “We want Tom in our lives, still playing tennis, still having fun and still having the whole future he had ahead of him.”
The family believe that something should have been done after the last accident at the complex, when Thomas Hughes fell to his death.
John visited the site with his brotherin-law shortly after the accident and saw first-hand where his son fell. He said: “We had to try and find out what had happened. When we arrived at the site, it was quite clear it shouldn’t have happened.
“This is what makes us so angry. It was completely avoidable, it could have been prevented, because if only someone had put a very simple fence up, as is there now, then this wouldn’t have happened.”
The heartbroken parents believe even a message or sign warning other holidaymakers of the dangers of the area following the previous incident could have helped.
John said: “It was reasonable, foreseeable, that that would happen because it had only happened five weeks earlier. So you should have either put a fence up, built the wall up or put a lock on the gate.”
He added that the family have received nothing from the hotel since their son’s death, and that a fence has now been put up.
A spokesman for law enforcement agency Guardia Civil in Mallorca said previously that transparent panels will be installed along the walkway, which is on the building’s sixth floor and connects to a street, to increase safety.
Ceri said she “never, ever” wanted her son to go on the trip.
“I didn’t want him to go. I never, ever did. Ever. And it was never because I thought Tom would be irresponsible or anything like that, it was just, you know, some of these stories you hear. And I’m just a worrier anyway. If Tom went out into Cardiff I’d like to know he’d got there safely, what time he was coming home, to stay in touch with me.
“So the thought of him going off on a boys’ holiday was... well, I just didn’t want him to.”
As the trip came closer, Ceri said, she became more excited for his first holiday away without the family, to celebrate finishing his A-levels with friends.
She said: “I said to him everything you’d expect a mother to say. I said ‘we can go anywhere, Tom, where shall we go?’
“‘No, mum I want to go with my friends.’
“And then you get to the point where, OK, well, you’ve got to be excited for him.
“So my messages before he was going away were ‘I bet you can’t wait’ and this sort of thing.”
Prior to Tom leaving, his parents had warned him to stay safe.
Ceri said: “I said to him, the safety over there is not the same as it is over here. So if you’re walking back from the bars and it’s near an edge, don’t be larking around with the others. Stay well away. Every eventuality I worried about.
“But he didn’t go on an edge, he went into what I think he thought was a shortcut and it was a garden.
“But it doesn’t feel real. Everyday we go to the cemetery, and you stand there and it’s weirdly peaceful. We look at each other and think ‘how could this be happening to us’?”
Tom was planning to follow in his dad’s footsteps and study economics at university.
His parents described his love of sport, how he and his brothers were “inseparable” and how they have been inundated with heartfelt tributes since his death.
Dad John said: “He was an amazing young man – he still is an amazing young man in everybody’s eyes.”
The funeral for Tom was held on July 26 in Porthkerry and more than 450 people attended.
Ceri said: “Tom was in the next room here. Every night I’d go in there and sit with him and talk with him and I knew that funeral day, when we had to let him go, would be the hardest ever.
“I didn’t want to leave him. Seeing everyone was quite comforting and the things people had to say was quite comforting. But it was the worst day of my life.”
Both Ceri and John said the realisation of what happened hits them every morning.
They added that the only respite they get is when they visit Tom at the nearby cemetery.
Ceri said: “We just feel hollow. You get through each day.
“Everyone says ‘you’re so strong’, but only people in the family know how you’re truly coping with it.
“And it’s a case of not really eating or sleeping properly, and when you do fall asleep you wake up and have that horrible instant moment where you forget Tom’s not here and then you come to the realisation he’s not coming home.
“And it’s this fear, an absolute dread, every single day. It’s in the pit of your stomach, like an ache.”
Ceri urged other teenagers heading out to similar resorts to stick together and stay on the main roads.Ceri said: “We were totally unaware about what the Spanish attitude was towards teenagers out abroad. They just assume that they are all the same, they’re going over there to get drunk, cause trouble and whatever and it’s that attitude that needs to change.
“But I think teenagers need to be aware of the dangers out there and the attitudes and so my message to them is ‘stay together’.
“You don’t allow any of you to disappear and wander off, you stick together [and] you be really conscious of the facts that safety out there is not the same as it is here.”
She added: “Don’t separate when you’re walking back to the hotel, you keep to the roads [and] you don’t deviate and assume there are shortcuts because you never know.”