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A tragic incident occurred involving a truck driver who was fatally crushed when a lorry cab he was transporting detached and rolled onto him, as revealed in a recent inquest. Thomas Paul Holton Willis, aged 29 and from Honiton in east Devon, was discovered trapped beneath the cab in a yard belonging to the lorry dealer PD Services located in Alltami, Flintshire, on 2 August 2022.
The site manager, Paul Porter, found Willis at around 6:00 am BST. Porter explained that he had momentarily left Willis to fetch a truck and winch to assist with unloading the cargo from the trailer. However, upon returning, he noticed that one of the tractor units had come off the trailer. The cab had rolled between 30 to 40 feet (approximately 9 to 12 meters) and come to rest halfway down a slope. Porter found Willis unresponsive beneath the cab and immediately contacted emergency services but recounted how everything happened very quickly.
The post-mortem report confirmed that Willis died rapidly as a result of crush asphyxia after being pinned and dragged around 16 meters by the rolling cab. Speaking in court, Porter described the shock of the event, saying, “It broke my heart… I go over it every day,” emphasizing that nothing like this had previously occurred on site.
During the inquest, Willis’s father, Paul, reviewed photographs and speculated that some of the straps securing the cab to the trailer might have loosened “of their own accord.” He maintained that the lorry cabs were properly fastened for the journey from Devon to north Wales. He explained that his son would typically remove the unnecessary straps upon arrival but leave some on to maneuver the vehicle within the yard. Remembering his son, Paul described him as an energetic and creative individual with a passion for raising shire horses—something the family was involved in together. The last time they had seen each other was at a horse show shortly before the accident. The family hopes to remember Willis in that positive light. The jury ultimately concluded that Willis’s death was caused by “a combination of factors” which led to the cab detaching and rolling off the trailer
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