Croydon tram crash: Families make official call for new inquest
The families of the victims of the Croydon tram crash have made a formal request for a fresh inquest into the incident, after last month’s verdict was slammed as a “total farce”.
In July the jury ruled that the seven deaths were the result of an accident after the coroner did not call representatives of Transport for London (TfL) and tram operator TOL to give evidence.
Now lawyers representing five of the seven families have written to the Attorney General calling for a new hearing to be called.
Osborne Law’s Ben Posford, the families’ lead solicitor, wrote: “We believe that it is necessary or desirable in the interests of justice that another investigation be held…
“[The coroner] refused to call any eyewitnesses who were in the crashed tram, nor any tram drivers or trainers, nor any managers from the tram company, nor any infrastructure managers. She refused to call the defaulting tram driver himself.”
Instead of calling representatives from TOL and TfL, coroner Sarah Ormond-Walshe instead relied mainly on evidence from the Rail Accident Investigation Board (RAIB), which compiled the initial report into the crash.
It said that the driver, Alfred Dorris, had likely had a “microsleep”, causing him to be disoriented when he left the tunnel.
But as City PM has reported over the last year, a series of audits carried out prior to the Croydon tram crash highlighting safety issues like fatigue management were not included in the original RAIB report.
Posford added that the decision had caused a public outcry, as well as “distress and injustice” for the families.
He added that if a new inquest was not called, it would render the inquest an “expensive farce”.
“If this decision is right … the inquest will never again hear from any of those who are directly responsible. Instead, the inquests will simply be a rubber-stamping exercise of the RAIB report relating to that incident, which renders the inquest an expensive farce.”
Dane Chinnery, 19, Philip Seary, 57, Dorota Rynkiewicz, 35, Robert Huxley, 63, and Philip Logan, 52, all from New Addington, and Donald Collett, 62, and Mark Smith, 35, both from Croydon, were killed in the crash.
It took more than four years for the inquest into their deaths to begin, with several delays due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The hearings were initially scheduled to last for thirteen weeks upon commencing in May, but after just seven weeks the jury were invited to give their verdict.
Ormond-Walshe, said that the jury could return a verdict of either unlawful killing or accidental death.