Claim: Police failed to preserve fatal accident scene 7/4/14
A fatal accident inquiry has heard police failed to preserve the scene where a young woman was killed.
Speech therapist Lorna Macdonald of Cross Street, Stornoway, drowned when her car went off the road into a loch during wild weather in Harris in November 2011.
At an inquiry in Stornoway today (Mon), lawyer Angus Macdonald -
He said there was no police present where the accident occurred when a relief officer turned up the following morning.
Mr Macdonald stated: “We would have expected the locus to have been protected from the time of the accident” until traffic investigators arrived.
He insisted: “It is normal for the vehicle to be left in situ at the locus and not be removed.”
The lawyer said anyone could have moved the debris or it could have been blown around by the storm.
He suggested tyre marks and gouges on the ground were caused by dragging the vehicle back up the embankment.
Police traffic collision investigator John Forsyth accepted that scenario had not been checked out.
Mr Forsyth told procurator fiscal David Teale he had “no doubt” the tyre marks, bumper and other debris from the vehicle “found at the locus indicates the line the vehicle took” into the loch.
Ambulance technician Geoffrey Peterson, said he and colleague arrived at the emergency scene after the fire brigade around 4.30pm.
He said there was no sign of life from Lorna when she was carried out of the car from the loch at 5.05pm.
She was “hooked-
Lorna Macdonald was formally pronounced dead later that evening.
Lawyer Angus Macdonald queried why the coastguard rescue helicopter was not called.
Two men, coincidentally health board maintenance workers who drove from Stornoway to undertake repairs at the Nurse’s House in Leverburgh, said they drove back north through South Harris that afternoon, shortly before the accident.
Driver Douglas Smith said they has a “few close encounters” in the severe weather with the “rain coming down in sheets and the wind really gusty.”
He spotted the lights of a vehicle behind him, slowed down to about 30 to 35mph and he signalled for it to overtake.
He said it was safe to overtake but a small green car overtook their high-
His passenger, Samuel Cameron, stressed the weather was “scary,” with severe gales, storm and torrential rain.
He said: “It was that strong our van was being blown across from one side to another.”
The torrential water coming down from the hill was being blown back up by the wind while he observed a loch at Ardhasaig, Harris, blowing “like it was a tornado.”
The inquiry continues.