Ship may have crushed tragic UK band’s car
Viola Beach, from left, River Reeves, Jack Dakin, Kris Leonard and Tomas Lowe A MASSIVE oil tanker may have crushed the car in which British band Viola Beach were tragically killed, it emerged yesterday.
The ship’s captain reportedly saw the hired Nissan Qashqai in the water but thought it was a mass of snow.
The shipping company has told investigators there is no way of knowing whether he drove over the vehicle because of the tanker’s vast size.
But it is thought it could explain the severe damage to the car.
Band members Kris Leonard, 20, River Reeves, 19, Tomas Lowe, 27, and Jack Dakin, 19, from Warrington, Cheshire, died in the accident along with their manager Craig Tarry, 32.
Heroes
They had just played their first foreign gig at a festival in Norrkoping, Sweden. The men’s car plunged more than 82ft into a canal through a gap in a road bridge which had opened to let the boat – the M/ T Tellus – pass.
Operated by Sirius Shipping, the Danish- registered tanker weighs 7,500 tons fully laden.
Daniel Backman, a spokesman for Sirius, said: “No one realised that a car had fallen from the bridge. That was only discovered the next day.
“No one put out an alert that anything like that had happened, so we didn’t know there had been an accident. There was no way we could have known if we had driven over a car. The vessel is much too large for that. We would of course have reacted and stopped. But the outcome... would probably not have been different.”
Swedish police were last night waiting for post mortem results in a bid to identify who was driving. They are investigating a number of scenarios including one that the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Witnesses said they saw no brake lights on the car as it thundered past.
Meanwhile former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher is backing a social media campaign to get Viola Beach’s debut single to number one.
Liam, 43, tweeted: “Viola Beach – Swings & Waterslides – RIP LG X”.
One supporter tweeted back: “One of our heroes tweeting for you and the lads @ craigtarry – Wish you could see all this. Nice one Liam!”
The Stone Roses too posted a link to the song with a message urging fans to “get them to number one”.
Swedish musician John Hugo Olssen who was with the band in their final hours said: “You [ could] really see they were having a great time... a group of friends doing something they had dreamed about their whole life.”
He said Craig had turned down a drink because he was driving and was clearly a “father figure” to the others.
Tributes were left yesterday outside the Lounge bar in Warrington where the band played.