Crash call policeman is ‘haunted’ by M9 tragedy
Colleagues tell of fears he has been ‘hung out to dry’ over deaths
THE police officer at the centre of the M9 car crash tragedy – which l eft a woman trapped for three days before she died of her injuries – has told friends: ‘I’m devastated.’
Colleagues claim Sergeant Brian Henry, a long- serving officer with a bravery commendation, has been ‘hung out to dry’ after taking a call about the crash involving Lamara Bell and John Yuill.
The i nformation was not entered into the police computer, leaving Miss Bell in the wreckage for three days beside her dead boyfriend. After being rescued, Miss Bell, 25, later died, forcing Scotland’s top police officer, Sir Stephen House, to apologise for an ‘individual failure’.
Senior police officers say that the sergeant, allegedly drafted in to work at Bilston Glen call centre in Midlothian without proper training, is haunted by what happened.
One said: ‘ Brian is genuinely gutted, and obviously very upset that he was involved in an incident that ended so tragically.’
Mr Yuill and Miss Bell, both f rom the Falkirk area, were driving home from a camping trip when their Renault Clio came off the M9 near Junction 9 at Bannockburn, Stirlingshire.
Sergeant Henry, 53, was working at the call centre on July 5, when he spoke to a member of the public who saw the car at the bottom of an embankment.
But the call was not logged and police did not go to the scene. It took a second phone call from a farmer three days later for police to find the crashed vehicle.
By this time Miss Bell was unconscious, with bleeding on the brain and kidney damage from dehydration. She was put in a medically-induced coma but died of her injuries on July 12.
The Police Investigations and Review Commissioner is looking into the circumstances of the incident.
Sergeant Henry, who has been a police officer for more than 25 years, was commended in 2000 for his bravery in containing a house fire in Rosewell, Midlothian, until firefighters arrived to rescue a man trapped inside.
With 2,000 civilian staff lost through budget cuts, forcing police officers to provide cover, colleagues said the fault lies with the wider organisation,
A co-worker said: ‘He’s a good lad, well-liked, and is obviously devastated but the feeling is that the failings were not his – they were systemic, driven by politics, statistics and budgets.’
Sergeant Henry, a keen cyclist and Munro-bagger, has not been suspended but is no longer working in the call centre. Another colleague criticised Sir Stephen for blaming ‘individual error’, while maintaining that control room systems worked.
He said: ‘What’s the point of an investigation then? Clearly, he already has all the answers and that enabled him to hang Brian Henry out to dry.’
Sergeant Henry is believed to have carried out only a few shifts at the call centre. It is understood that untrained officers developed an informal system of writing down details of telephone calls before passing them to trained colleagues to log them in.
A source said: ‘Stephen House blamed i ndividual error and pointed to an experienced officer who took the call, which would suggest Brian did something wrong – most likely failing to pass on his paper note.
‘ It’s equally possible that trained staff might become overwhelmed by these notes on a busy shift.’
A retired senior officer added: ‘If you rely on a computer system to divert calls from Stirling to Midlothian, then notify local police of an incident in the Stirling area, that system has to be foolproof.
‘The chief constable thought he could paper over the cracks by drafting in police officers who weren’t trained but he failed to see how big the cracks were. This tragedy is a result of that corporate failure.’
Sergeant Henry was not available at his home in Midlothian. His wife Wendy, also a police officer, said: ‘We cannot say anything. There i s an i nvestigation ongoing.’
‘Brian is very upset’