Shropshire teenager died after coach collision, coroner rules

Arnold Higgins was found dead beside the A529 between Adderley and Market Drayton, having last been seen the day before leaving the farm he worked at to walk home.

The 19-year-old, of Sycamore Way, Market Drayton, was working for farmer Graham Brindley at The Lees in Adderley at the time of his death in November last year.

An inquest held at the Guildhall in Shrewsbury yesterday heard a post mortem revealed the cause of Mr Higgins's death to be head injuries consistent with being involved in a road accident.

Coach driver John Gaynor, from Stoke-on-Trent, was called to give evidence. He told the hearing he was driving students back from college in Crewe on the evening of November 7 last year and admitted he could have been driving along the unlit A529 in darkness at the same time Mr Higgins was walking home.

Mr Gaynor said he heard a "hell of a bang" and thought he had hit a bird, but got out of the coach to investigate and could see nothing.

"I thought it was a pheasant," he said. "A lad sitting behind me said 'that must have been a big bird' and someone else asked me if I had seen my windscreen. It was cracked from top to bottom.

"I brought the coach to a standstill and I remember getting out and looking down the road for a bird, but I didn't see a thing.

"I didn't see him. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it was me I am really sorry."

Shropshire coroner John Ellery said to the driver: "You do not know to this day whether it was you that hit Arnold, do you? But if it was you, you didn't see him?"

Mr Gaynor replied: "That's right."

Pc Dave Williams, of West Mercia Police, told the inquest all of the students on the coach had been interviewed and all told of also hearing a big bang. But none saw Mr Higgins, he said.

He said the teenager's body was discovered the following morning, on November 8 last year, prompting extensive door to door enquiries and press appeals as officers investigated his death.

Summing up, and recording a verdict of accidental death, Mr Ellery said: "I accept Mr Gaynor's evidence, I accept he can't be sure that it was his coach.

"But I am looking at the whole set of circumstances, I have to reach a conclusion on the balance of probabilities.

"It's absolutely clear the coach hit something. Mr Gaynor thought it was a pheasant or a big bird. My conclusion was that it was Arnold."

He told Mr Higgins' family: "It was an accident. It is a terrible tragedy for you to lose Arnold at 19 on the way home from a day's work. All I can do is offer to you my condolences."