Hide and seek girl, 4 killed by mum’s car

A GIRL of four was run over and killed by her mother while playing hide- and- seek, an inquest heard yesterday.

Olivia Hicks was being dropped off at her grandmother’s house in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, when she darted behind the Ford Focus.

Thinking Olivia had gone into the house her mother, Kelly Quigley-hicks, 35, reversed down the driveway to go to work, trapping her beneath the car.

Firemen freed Olivia and she was lifted by air ambulance to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, but she died five days after the February 20 accident.

Mrs Quigley-hicks, a council officer, and her husband Graham Hicks, 34, an investment banker for Deutsche Bank, were too upset to attend yesterday’s inquest.

But they released a tribute which said: ‘Olivia was a cheeky, chatty and clever little girl who has left us, our family, friends and everyone who knew her with amazing memories that will never fade. We miss her every day.’

Coroner’s officer Graham Wright yesterday confirmed Olivia, who lived with her parents in a £ 400,000 four- bedroom semidetached house in Biggleswade, had been playing hide-and-seek.

Collision investigator PC Alan Kemp said Olivia ‘would have been out of sight of the driver’, adding: ‘Being a small child, the force of the car caused her to topple over. The gap between the car and the gravel reduced. The weight of the car then came upon Olivia.’

A post-mortem examination found Olivia died from catastrophic, irreversible brain damage.

Coroner David Morris recorded a narrative verdict, saying: ‘As the car came down the slope it compressed on to her. If the driveway had been level it might have passed over her.’

Police confirmed there were no plans to bring charges against Mrs Quigley-hicks.