Pontypridd & Llantrisant Observer
Two years on, we still don’t know truth about death of my son
IT SHOULD have been like any other weekday for Sarah Davies, but Wednesday, July 6, 2022, will forever stick in her mind as the day her world came crashing down.
Following a night shift, Sarah woke her 15-year-old son Myron at 7am ready for school and made him a packed lunch before waving him goodbye.
Tragically, it was the last time Sarah would see her only child alive. The teeanger was found dead at Abersychan quarry, near Pontypool, just 12 hours later.
Nearly two years have passed since the traumatic events of that day, but Sarah and the rest of Myron’s family are still without answers as to what really happened.
An inquest into the circumstances which led to Myron’s death is yet to go ahead, with several previous dates for the hearing postponed.
A new date has been set for this summer, which Sarah hopes will bring her much-needed closure – she has spent the past 22 months depressed and in turmoil as she tries to piece together what happened, without having all the answers.
“It’s so hard not knowing the truth,” she said. “You can only grieve to a certain point when you don’t know the truth because you don’t know exactly what happened.”
Sarah said she remembered Myron telling her the day before that he wanted to go out with his friends after school.
She said: “I came home [after working in a care home] at 7am and woke him up. He texted me the day before saying he wanted to go out with friends after school, so I made him a packed lunch and made sure he had some money in his bag.”
Sarah said she texted Myron at around 4pm to let him know a parcel had arrived for him, to which he said “thank you” and let her know that he would be home at around 7pm.
“I replied saying ‘that’s fine’ and that I would be in work for 7pm, but his dad would be home”, she said.
But when 7pm came around, Sarah explained that her partner heard sirens rush through the village while he waited for Myron to come home. At around 7.30pm there came a knock at the door. However, it was the police, not Myron. Sarah said: “The police asked if Myron Davies lived here and he said ‘yes.’ They asked for a recent picture of Myron, so he went to get one off the wall. Then they said something had happened, but they wouldn’t tell him what. They kept saying ‘we can’t tell you’ and that he would have to wait.”
Next, Sarah said her partner rang her to say something had happened to Myron, before he came to collect her from work. Sarah said: “When he arrived I asked him to put the police on the phone and I said, ‘tell me what happened,’ and ‘is my son safe?’ but they still said they couldn’t tell me at that stage.
“I had a knot in my stomach. I started ringing all his friends’ parents, asking them if they had seen Myron and they all said no.”
As they drove towards their home, Sarah said it was clear to see where the incident had happened, as police had blocked off the road near the quarry in Limekiln Road.
She said the quarry was a five-mile drive from the house or a 10-minute walk, and could be viewed from Myron’s bedroom window.
She said: “We went straight to the quarry. The police didn’t say it was anything to do with the quarry, but you can see over there from Myron’s bedroom window, we could hear the emergency services and the road was blocked.
“When we got there, there were about two fire engines, two ambulances, three police cars an air ambulance and a coastguard helicopter. We stood at the road for what felt like forever.”
Sarah said she estimated that she and her partner were standing there for around 40 minutes before police were able to confirm that Myron had been involved in an incident and had died. The police officer said she had worked on him for around 30 minutes but couldn’t bring him back.
“I just screamed. I wanted to go to him, but I wasn’t allowed to.
“Someone had to identify him, but they said they didn’t want me or my partner to do it [due to it being upsetting] so my cousin did it.”
Next, Sarah said Myron’s body was taken to the Grange Hospital in Cwmbran by the emergency services, while she and her partner followed behind.
At around 10pm, she was able to spend some time with her son.
Gwent Police finalised its investigation into Myron’s death in September 2023. Officers said they found no criminal or third-party involvement.
They previously confirmed that a 14-year-old girl also fell from the quarry during the same incident and was critically injured.
Myron’s inquest was opened on July 18, 2022, with his medical cause of death given as “multiple blunt-force injuries to the head and trunk”.
The full inquest was adjourned until April 2023 to give Gwent Police time to carry out their investigation.
However, that inquest was further adjourned, with a new date set to go ahead two days before Mother’s Day this March. That was also adjourned.
Another date has now been set for next month, but Sarah said she has diminishing faith that she would ever discover what really happened.
“You build yourself up each time,” she said. “It feels like they don’t care. It hits you like a bombshell when they say it’s not going ahead. It feels like we’ll never know the truth.”
Despite the fact that Sarah still doesn’t have all the facts, she said she had put together small pieces of information that she replayed over and over again in her mind.
“I have worked it out in my head,” she said. “I’ve worked out what happened by having his clothes back and seeing messages on his phone. I go over it in my head and I have nightmares about it.”
She said the traumatic nature of the loss, paired with having no real answers, had left her and her partner in a “constant state of depression”.
She said: “We don’t go out anymore. I only go out if I really have to go out and he won’t go out at all.
“We don’t like speaking to people. I worked 40 hours a week before Myron died, if not more, but since Myron died I haven’t worked. It’s all because of depression. I miss him every single day. We were offered support but didn’t see the point because we don’t know exactly what happened. We don’t want to go and discuss what happened, only to find out something else.”
Sarah paid tribute to Myron, saying: “He meant the world to me. Everyone loved being around him. He really wanted to go to college and he had his life planned.
“I had his GCSE results back from school even though he didn’t complete Year 11. They marked him on his work from Year Seven to Year 10 and he had Cs and one B. He passed everything.”
She continued: “Christmases and birthdays are really hard. I still buy gifts for Myron and put them in his bedroom, I’ve kept it the same [since he passed] and all his clothes are still in his wardrobe.
“December 2024 was always going to be special for us. Myron would be turning 18 and it will be my 40th.
“We had always talked about doing something special to celebrate it together, and now he is not here.”
In a recent statement, a Gwent Police spokeswoman said: “Following extensive inquiries into the death of Myron Davies, who reportedly fell from a quarry in Pontypool in July 2022, the investigation found no criminal or third-party involvement.
“The investigation was finalised in September 2023 and a report was submitted to the coroner. Our thoughts remain with the family of Myron and hope that the inquest can provide them with answers.”