The family who dodged death at epicentre of air show disaster
Father shown in photo just yards from crash tells how they walked away from fireball without a scratch
A FAMILY who were just yards away from the site of the Shoreham air show crash have described how they were showered with burning debris but managed to walk away unscathed.
Neil Lewer, 48, his wife Melanie, 44, and their two youngest children, 15-year-old Robin and Joanne, 10, were on the side of the A27 when the Hawker Hunter jet came down in front of them.
Dramatic photographs showed the family frozen in horror as the aircraft exploded into a fireball and hurtled towards them. It was widely thought that the people in the photograph must have been among the 11 victims who are known to have perished.
But Mr Lewer has come forward to describe how they were all able to walk away without a scratch.
Describing how he watched the disaster unfold right before his eyes, he said: “The Hawker came from the west. It did a couple of passes over the airfield and started its routine. It pulled up right above us to start the loop. The plane disappeared behind the bushes quite a way from us.
“I thought, ‘He’s going to pull up in a minute, when he pulls up he’s going to be so low and so loud’.
“I’ve been to quite a few air shows; pilots come down low to draw the crowds. Then I had this instinct that he wasn’t going to pull up.
“I’ve got a rough idea of the time that you expect them to be back up by. It just seemed to go on for a lot longer than expected.
“The engine didn’t cut out. I think the pilot, almost at the last minute, put his foot down to pull up because you could hear this ear-piercingly loud scream of the engine. Then I heard this almighty great ‘ whoomph’ as it hit the ground. We instinctively started to duck.”
Mr Lewer said scorched debris began raining down and when the smoke finally cleared it was as if a bomb had gone off.
He told the Surrey Mirror: “There were bits of smouldering black debris dotted about. People were just standing there in a state of shock. We didn’t know what the hell had happened.
“My wife remembers seeing a motorcyclist and thinking, ‘he’s got funny hair’, and then realising it had all been burnt off. My daughter was in hysterics, she’s only 10.
“My son was on the phone crying, saying, ‘I’ve seen dead bodies’.”
Unable to believe they had survived the family, from Redhill, Surrey, then began walking back to the town centre where their car was parked.
“We got over the footbridge, that
‘I drove home in my boxers. My clothes were covered in not very nice things. I don’t remember much of the drive’
was when my wife said, ‘You’ve got bits on your back,’ and I took my T-shirt off and threw it in the bin.
“I drove home in my boxers, my clothes were covered in not very nice things. I don’t remember much of the drive.”
Mr Lewer said the events happened so quickly that it was only when he recognised himself and his family in the photographs, that he began to appreciate how narrow an escape they had.
He said: “I didn’t get much sleep that night, then I came across that photo and saw how lucky we were. I keep thinking of the ‘what-ifs’.
“If the plane had landed a couple more degrees to the left, or if the wings were straight, it would have taken us out. If we’d have been in the same spot as last year we would have been hit. Someone was looking down on us that day.”