Grieving parents feel let down by system

Catriona Loughran • Published 11 Mar 2010 11:40

The parents of a Florencecourt teenager knocked down and killed as she walked home from school two years ago feel "justice will never be done" over the death of their beloved child.

Debbie Whyte, 14 and Nathan Gault, 15, both pupils of Devenish College, were struck by a passing car as they walked along the Croaghrim Road on November, 27, 2008.

At the inquest into their deaths on Monday, a coroner concluded that wearing "illuminating clothing" could have prevented the deaths of two school friends killed just weeks before Christmas.

Last year the Public Prosecution Service ruled that no prosecutions would be made in relation to the case.

But for Debbie's anguished parents Colin and Ann, said they feel helpless and feel let down by the system.

"What we can't get our heads round is, how these children couldn't have been seen? There are school children walking on roads in the dark evenings across the country and this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time. They say (the PPS) they haven't enough evidence to make a prosecution, so why did the police tell us two years ago that there would be one? The whole thing doesn't add up and what sort of example does this set to drivers out there? We feel let down and Joanne [Nathan's mother] feels the same," said Colin Whyte.

Enniskillen Courthouse heard how Nathan and Debbie along with their friend Wayne Manley, were walking abreast on the dark road and were wearing dark uniforms when the accident took place.

Wayne, who was unhurt, told the inquest that he and Nathan were chatting while Debbie was texting on her phone and that they never heard the car coming towards them.

"It sounded like it was in the distance, at the top of the main road," he said.

He told the inquest he remembered feeling something on his right arm and then saw the car and his first cousin Debbie lying on the roadside.

Initially, he thought his best friend Nathan had run from the scene into his aunt's house in shock but Nathan's body was tragically discovered a short time later at the bottom of his relative's garden.

Nathan died at the scene of a head injury and Debbie lost her fight for life and died of multiple injuries the following day at the Erne Hospital.

Wayne said it was usual for them to walk home in the dark after getting the late bus on school evenings and that they would sometimes use their mobile phones as beacons.

"We would use the light of the screen, we would flash its lights to see in front of us" he said.

He told the inquest that pupils used to get small reflective things at school but "we never used them."

Other witnesses giving evidence said it was "extremely dark" that evening and one police sergeant described it as "eerily dark" and "not even the moon was out to guide you."

The driver of the car, Ms Eva Seaman told the inquest that she genuinely didn't see the two friends and only realised she struck something when she heard a loud bang and the windscreen smashed of her red Renault Megane car.

"I just came out of the street-lighting, it all happened so fast. I got out of the car and saw Wayne, he was in shock and I saw the wee girl lying on the side of the road, I checked if she had a pulse and asked Wayne to ring an ambulance."

A forensic scientist stated the car was travelling around 40mph and was driving with dipped headlights on.

After carrying out a reconstruction, he found that a car with dipped headlights travelling at 40mph would be able to see a person from 18 metres away but said the reaction time travelling at that speed would be about a second.

When he repeated the experiment using high visibility jackets, he said the distance of seeing a person increased to more than 105 metres with dipped headlights, and 200 metres with lights at full beam and travelling at that speed, would give a better reaction time.

Nathan's mother Joanne Gault asked him, what distance would he have saw a person if the lights were on at full-beam?

To which he replied, "42 metres if the lights were on and reaction time would have been about two seconds travelling at 40mph."

But Debbie's father Colin, who was visibly upset by some of the evidence presented, told the inquest that many questions were still left unanswered and said he can't understand how anyone could have missed three big teenagers walking along the road.

"It doesn't make sense, how can three big children not be seen?" and repeated this question throughout the hearing.

He also expressed his discontent when he told the inquest that the forensic team never alerted his family to the reconstruction taking place on the road outside their house.

"We were told nothing, they never even had the manners to tell us it was going on," said Mr Whyte.

Coroner Brian Sherrard concluded that Debbie and Nathan's death could have been prevented if they were wearing more "illuminated clothing" and warned pedestrians that "certain steps can be made" into making journeys on the roads safer.

He described the deaths of two children as "exceptionally tragic" for any parent or community to deal with.

Since the deaths, an action plan has been launched by the Western Education and Library Board to improve the visibility of school children on rural roads and reflective strips are to be rolled out to school blazes this September.

"We are happy some good has been brought out from all of this but we feel let down by the system that justice will never be done for Nathan and Debbie and it hurts every single day," the Whytes said.

Tweet

This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 11 Mar 10

Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our News archives.