How a stupid machine killed our angel Iris It was an ‘un-her’ way to go, says dad Ben Goldsmith of buggy crash
FINANCIER Ben Gold- smith yesterday described the awful circumstances in which his daughter Iris was crushed to death by a ‘stupid machine’, as tributes were paid to the teenager.
The ‘sassy and cool’ 15-yearold died when the all-terrain buggy she was driving across the family’s farm flipped over on July 8.
It was, said her grief- stricken father, ‘such an un-Iris way to go’.
As her parents released photographs of her ‘spectacular’ life, an inquest was opened into the death of Iris, niece of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith and campaigner Jemima.
The teenager had just started the school holidays from £12,980a-term Wycombe Abbey in Buckinghamshire, and had arrived at the farm near North Brewham, Somerset, with a friend, when they decided to visit another friend on a neighbouring farm.
They crossed the fields in a Polaris Mule off-road buggy, which the family had encouraged as it is equipped with a roll cage and is considered safer than quad bikes.
Mr Goldsmith, 38, said his daughter realised they were going to arrive ten minutes early, ‘and so, on a whim, just to kill time, she started driving around the field’. He told the Evening Standard: ‘And she turned too fast, or too sharply, and the vehicle flipped.’
The other girl was thrown clear, ‘but either Iris was thrown out or she tried to jump, and the vehicle landed on her’.
‘The gardener came running but I think Iris had already died,’ he said. ‘A couple of others helped lift it off. The ambulance crew spent an hour trying to save her.’
He added: ‘It was such an un-Iris way to go. She was incredibly sophisticated, sassy and cool – a bright girl barrelling around London. It was so un-her to be killed by this stupid machine.’
Yesterday’s four-minute opening of the inquest in Taunton was told police were not treating the accident as suspicious.
Senior Somerset coroner Tony Williams said a preliminary postmortem had not established the medical cause of Iris’s death. He adjourned the hearing to October saying he had only limited information about the accident.
Photographs released by Iris’s family yesterday included a tribute by her friends that saw them write her name in the sand in huge letters and lock hands on a beach in Cornwall.
Other shots showed the ‘life-giving, fun and free’ teenager putting on her school uniform and cradling a young child.
Hundreds of teenage friends and family packed St Mary’s Church near the family home in Barnes, south-west London, for Iris’s private funeral on Wednesday.
In an emotional eulogy, her mother Kate Rothschild said the family had been torn apart.
‘I can’t possibly begin to explain the ocean of grief we find ourselves in or the feeling of being shattered into a thousand unfindable pieces,’ she added.