An inquest into the deaths of four teenage boys has found that their fatal car crash in November 2023 could have been avoided. Hugo Morris, Harvey Owen, Wilf Fitchett and Jevon Hirst, all A-level students from Shrewsbury, were on a camping trip in Eryri National Park, also known as Snowdonia, when their Ford Fiesta left a rural road near the villages of Garreg and Llanfrothen. The car flipped over into a flooded ditch and the boys drowned as they were trapped inside.
A post-mortem examination revealed that none of the teenagers had any internal or external injuries and all four had drowned. Crash investigators found that the car had no catastrophic mechanical failures, but both rear tyres were only half the required inflated pressure for carrying four people. The investigators calculated that the car had entered a bend at an excessive speed, with the maximum theoretical speed for the bend at 38mph. However, they determined that the fastest safe speed was only 26mph.
The inquest concluded that the crash was avoidable, and a road traffic collision was recorded by the coroner for North West Wales. The senior coroner, Kate Robertson, also noted that there had been inadequate signage on the approach to the bend, and she will be writing to Cyngor Gwynedd and the landowner of the crash site about the need for fencing or barriers in the area.
The parents of the boys paid tribute to their sons. Harvey’s mother, Crystal, said that he was “perfect from the minute he came into the world and continued to be until he was tragically taken from us”. Wilf’s mother, Heather Sanderson, said she was “very proud” of her son, who was “so kind and had a lovely sense of humour”. Jevon’s mother, Melanie Hirst, described her son as “really close to his family and loved” and Hugo’s parents, Dominic and Sarah Morris, said that their son had a “thirst for life.”
Harvey’s mother has launched a campaign to change the law for younger drivers following her son’s death. The campaign calls for the introduction of a graduated driving licence that would require new learners to have at least six months of training before being able to apply for a test. It would also ban newly-qualified drivers from carrying passengers under the age of 25 for the first six months, without an older adult present
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