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Viola Beach manager drove through barriers into bridge, inquest told
Viola Beach manager drove through barriers into bridge, inquest told
(35 minutes later)
The four members of the band Viola Beach “living the dream” on tour abroad were killed when their manager drove their car through two crash barriers into a raised bridge before plunging into a canal below, an inquest heard.
Four members of a British indie band and their manager died after their car crashed through two motorway barriers before striking a bridge and falling 80ft (25 metres) into a shipping canal, an inquest has heard.
Craig Tarry, 32, was behind the wheel of the hired Nissan Qashqai taking the band back to their hotel after playing at a festival for upcoming bands near Stockholm, Sweden last February.
Craig Tarry, the 32-year-old manager, was driving the band back to a hotel in Stockholm in the early hours of the morning after they had played at a Swedish music festival.
The four-piece Warrington-based band – Kris Leonard, 19, River Reeves, 19, Tomas Lowe, 27, and Jack Dakin, 19 – had flown out from Manchester the night before and were “very much in the ascendancy” with foreign tours planned.
Singer Kris Leonard, 20, guitarist River Reeves, 19, drummer Jack Dakin, 19, and Tarry died from head injuries. Bass guitarist Tomas Lowe, 27, drowned.
But the inquest into their deaths at Cheshire coroner’s court in Warrington heard all five died around 2am on 16 February following the inexplicable crash.
Leonard was in the front passenger seat. Reeves, Dakin and Lowe were in the back of the vehicle and were not wearing seatbelts.
As the car drove down a motorway, flashing yellow lights and signals warned a bridge ahead over a ship canal was about to be raised, with the middle section of the road lifted horizontally, the inquest heard.
The bridge over the Södertälje canal, 18 miles west of Stockholm, was raised while a tanker passed underneath when the band’s rented Nissan Qashqai overtook queueing traffic. Witnesses said the car clipped the wing mirror of a taxi, hit two barriers, and crashed into the bridge at 50mph, despite signs warning that the bridge was up.
Tarry drove down a verge past stationary queueing traffic and through the first set of barriers around 120 metres from the bridge, the court heard.
In a statement, Lars Berglund, one of the investigating police officers, said the crash happened at about 2am on 13 February this year.
It then drove in a “controlled manner” at between 70-90 km/h (43-56mph) down the centre of the road, with the white lines going under the vehicle.
The inquest in Warrington was shown CCTV footage of the Nissan stopping behind other cars at the barrier before squeezing past them on the hard shoulder and through the first of the barriers. The vehicle went through another barrier at speed before striking the partly opened open bridge and falling 80ft into the canal.
The court heard it then went through a second set of barriers, 30 metres from the drop into the canal and crashed into the raised section of the bridge before plummeting 25 metres into the water below.
The car was found upside down at the bottom of the freezing canal, from which divers recovered all five bodies.
The impact caused “substantial deformation” of the vehicle, the court heard, with scraping and damage to the underside of the bridge section.
Postmortem examination results showed that Tarry did not have any traces of alcohol or drugs in his blood at the time of the crash.
A tanker that had requested the bridge to be lifted then passed over the crash spot and “contact” between the tanker and car could not be ruled out.
Technical examination showed there was nothing wrong with the car, or the signalling or barrier system or the procedure for raising the bridge, and the road was wet but not frozen with ice.
The alarm was raised when police were informed of car parts and damaged barriers on the road – then realised a car had gone into the canal.
Postmortem reports by medics in Sweden, read to a courtroom packed with relatives of the band, revealed all died from head injuries apart from Lowe, whose cause of death was given as drowning.
There were no drugs or alcohol found in Tarry, and no drugs and only small amounts of alcohol found in the band members.
