Fatal A61 crash - supporting Poppie

We had a dreadful incident on the A1M just outside Durham a few months ago.
It makes harrowing reading and the drunken thug who caused the death of a baby and his Aunty was jailed for 17 years. Should have been double!

Didn’t mean to derail the thread, but ……..

At first I didn’t realise that there was a surviving child. It’s almost worse than if they had all been killed. How does any child cope with such sudden catastrophic loss?

Very, very sad ferry23 - thanks for the link.

Yes, I read about that George’s gran*- they should introduce whole life sentences - especially for these thugs

Terribly sad.

Beyond heartbreaking for that poor girl.

Thank you for the link. Just tragic.

I am left wondering whether the two girls, presumably in the back seat, were wearing seat belts.

We have had so many of these all passenger fatality car crashes recently. There was one on Saturday in Gloucestershire that killed 4 young men. The reason all die, or just the driver survives is because the back seat passengers are not wearing their seat belts.

Nothing can mitigate the tragedy for this little girl, but I do think it is time we had a national campaign, a bit like clunk, click every trip' to remind everyone of the need to for everyone sitting on the back seat to wear seat belts.

When DC were at primary school, a family with 2 children in the school suffered a similar tragedy. The two boys, 9 & 16, in the back seat were thrown over their parents heads and through the windscreen and died, they were not wearing seat belts. In this case, both parents survived but very severely disabled, and the 11 year old daughter, who had stayed at home survived.

Please make sure back seat passengers wear seat belts. I refuse to drive anyone in my car unless their seat belt is on.

I've donated.

Utterly tragic and hard to imagine how they'll cope.

Poppie hadn't been in the car. She'd been playing at a friend's house.

No idea how she'd have been told about the deaths but it must have been harrowing.

Coming round that bend the motorcycle was on the wrong side of the road apparently. Tragic. Six lives lost. Harrowing.

I’ve seen a photo of the wrecked car and it’s a miracle anyone survived, seat belts or not.

So very sad, poor little girl.

Rekarie

I've donated.

Utterly tragic and hard to imagine how they'll cope.

Poppie hadn't been in the car. She'd been playing at a friend's house.

No idea how she'd have been told about the deaths but it must have been harrowing.

Oh, I didn’t realise Poppie hadn’t been in the car.

The car turned into a fireball, upside down after being catapaulted. Brother, who is (court) expert witness in forensics wrt auto, said not to speculate. Could have been medical episode, electrical failure, something running out or idiot driving. Two vehicles, one on the wrong side of the road. So easy to blame a driver but may not have been unavoidable

Beyond sad

sorry, bad grammar. May not have been avoidable

The Gofundme donations have exceeded a quarter of a million pounds in little more than a day.

The chap who started it has given articulate and detailed accounts of how he is connected to Poppie, why he set it up and how the funding will be used, monitored and administered.

His original goal was to raise £3000 so I would guess they have been overwhelmed at the level of feeling about this awful accident.

This is exactly the sort of thing that crowdfunding is so good for. It's going to at least provide some financial stability for Poppie and help with dealing with her ongoing and undeniably long term grief and trauma.

And from a donor's point of view, it's a tangible way of expressing our own feelings of sadness and impotence in situations such as these.