A Bristol pet owner left horrified after her beloved cat died after being hit by a Royal Mail vehicle outside her Emersons Green home, says the delivery service has been “rubbing salt” in her wounds by allowing the driver to remain on the round delivering near her home. A CCTV video from a neighbour - which has been seen by Bristol Live - clearly shows a Royal Mail worker vehicle was involved in the road traffic incident.
Justine Sayers, 52, said the company has failed to handle her case sympathetically after months of back-and-forth communication via its three-level complaint system, including providing harrowing video footage showing the death of her cat Carrie in June.
She told Bristol Live that she only knew of Carrie’s death after a neighbour gave her the devastating news. She said: “It was like an out-of-body experience.”
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She told Bristol Live that the Royal Mail reallocated the driver to another patch for “two months” but was shocked to learn the driver had returned back to the area after spotting them near her home. She claims Royal Mail has “ignored” her when she complained about it in September.
Miss Sayers first bonded with Carrie when she volunteered at Holly Hedge Animal Sanctuary training feral cats, before the duo became inseparable for 12 years. She said on the day Carrie died she was fast asleep at the end of her bed in the morning but by the evening, her little spot had grown cold. "My house is just a house now - it's no longer a home,” she added.
The aesthetics practitioner said that her wellbeing took a turn for the worse and her weight plummeted to just six-and-a-half stone. “I have never known pain like it - I couldn’t eat for months it was just horrendous. I felt so hollow inside,” she said.
Miss Sayers also approached the police about the incident but was told there was nothing that could be done and now wants the laws around cats to change. Miss Sayers asked Bristol Live not to show the distressing footage as she would like Carrie to be remembered as the charismatic family member she once was. “It's just not how you would want to see your beloved pet go in the end - it was awful. I lost my best friend, my life companion, my world and my heart - my life will never be the same without her,” she added.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “We are very sorry to have heard reports of a customer’s cat being killed in a road traffic incident, and we extend deepest sympathies for the loss of this much-loved pet. We have not been shown the video that reportedly confirms that the cat was sadly killed by a Royal Mail vehicle, and we cannot comment on a video that we have not seen. Although our investigations have concluded that no Royal Mail driver was at fault on this occasion, we are very sorry if our vehicle was involved in any way, however accidental. We are also very sorry to hear that our customer is unhappy with how her complaint about this incident has been handled, and will be contacting her to apologise and to discuss this further.”
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