Big rock, big rock – mum’s cry as she tried to save daughter from falling boulder on beach
A GRIEVING mother has told how she shouted ‘big rock, big rock’ to her daughter in a doomed bid to save her from a falling boulder.
In a heartbreaking letter read out at an inquest yesterday, Holly Forster described the moment the rock came tumbling from a seaside cliff and struck nine-year-old Harriet.
She wrote: ‘We were more than 10ft away from the cliff and I heard the scattering noise of small pebbles falling. I looked up at the cliff and saw different sized stones falling and one larger bit of rock. It was 2ft by a bit less than 2ft in size.
‘I saw it falling. There was time enough to say “big rock, big rock”.’
The pair ran but were hit by the rocks, leaving Harriet with fatal injuries.
Mrs Forster, 47, who is suffering from post-traumatic stress and was not fit enough to attend the inquest at Scarbor- ough, North Yorkshire, wrote: ‘I am still haunted day and night by the horrors of Harriet’s death... The sights and sounds of that day are never far from my mind.’
‘Being without Harriet, who was the apple of my eye and the light of my life, causes me pain that I suspect I will never recover from. I would swap places with her in a heartbeat.’
She was staying in the area with her daughter in August when they went for a day out to Staithes.
As they began to walk back along the beach, stones began falling from the cliff at about 3.30pm. Mrs Forster wrote: ‘We both set off running and Harriet was running towards the sea... I felt rocks hit me. One landed on my head and one landed on my back and hit the rucksack. It felt like it knocked me forward... Due to the rock falling on my head, I am not sure if I blacked out for a short time.
‘I heard a big rock hit and I saw a big cloud of dust. It sounded like it hit stone. I could see Harriet in front of me, she was a couple of arms’ lengths in front. I was on the floor and Harriet was on the floor.
‘I scrambled and tried to get to Harriet, she was in a cleft in the rock. I got my hand under Harriet’s armpit. I pulled her out to assess her. She was unconscious.’
Mrs Forster, of Weston- on-the- Green, Oxfordshire, said her daughter was a ‘dead weight’ and clearly had a broken arm and leg.
‘Harriet was not breathing, I thought “don’t be dead”. Her lips were going blue and her tongue was white. I called out for help and started chest compressions.’
An off- duty police officer and paramedic were quickly on the scene to take over resuscitation attempts and an air ambulance arrived but nothing could be done to revive Harriet. A post mortem examination found that Harriet died from multiple injuries to the head, chest and abdomen. Coroner Michael Oakley recorded a verdict of accidental death.
‘I’m haunted by the horrors of her death’