The car carrying the four teenagers who died in a crash in north Wales left a narrow, winding road on a leaf-covered bend and became stuck upside down in a ditch that had just become swollen with water, said a farmer who works on the land where the accident happened.
Despite a desperate police helicopter search, the vehicle was finally spotted by a passenger in a recycling lorry almost 48 hours after the four were last seen, the farmer said.
Police are investigating how the Ford Fiesta carrying Jevon Hirst, Harvey Owen, Wilf Fitchett and Hugo Morris, all college students aged between 16 and 18, ended up in the ditch in Snowdonia (Eryri).
Posting on Facebook on Wednesday morning, Crystal Owen, Harvey’s mother, said: “I feel like I’m in a nightmare I wish I could wake up from but I’m not. I just wanted to say I do appreciate people’s kindness but no amount of messages is going to help me overcome this. Nothing will make this nightmare go away.”
Earlier, in a tribute posted on Instagram, Wilf’s girlfriend, Maddi, said: “I’m going to miss you for ever. The sweetest and most loving boy I’ve ever known. Thank you for loving me endlessly, I promise I’ll do the same for you. I can’t imagine my world without you.”
Her mother, Lisa Corfield, said: “Wilf was such a lovely kind lad and treated Maddi in a way only a mother could hope her daughter be treated. Maddi is heartbroken and we will all miss you dearly Wilf.”
Rhys Williams, who lives 25 metres from the crash site and farms the land where the accident happened, told the Guardian he was woken early on Tuesday morning by a helicopter hovering overhead, its search beam on. “They wouldn’t have seen anything – no chance.”
Williams said: “They [the teenagers] were found by the recycling lorry at 10am. They were higher up. That’s why they could see them. You have to be in a high vehicle to see anything. And you’ve got to be looking, a passenger. The driver would have been looking at the road. The binman who saw it said something caught his eye.”
The boys, who are believed to have last been seen on Sunday afternoon, are thought to have been travelling north on the A4085 near the village of Garreg when they crashed. The police were alerted they were missing on Monday afternoon and began the search.
Williams said: “There were no tracks on the road, nothing to be seen. It’s a sharp bend, it narrows, there were lots of leaves on that corner. There have been one or two accidents there before.
“They were so unlucky, the way the car went in. It’s gone into the ditch, low into the ditch. It’s a small car. If they had hit a tree or a fence, they would gone in another way.
“I went past and didn’t see anything. Two buses would have gone past before 10am and not seen anything.”
Williams said the weather was bad over the weekend. “On Sunday the water was high. It was brutal. There’s always a foot or two of water in the ditch but it can come up 6ft. The river had gone high quickly. By Tuesday morning the level had come down.”
Mobile signal in the area is very patchy. The EE signal, for example, is strong but at the site Vodafone’s is weak.
Two communities on either side of the England-Wales border were in mourning. A ceremony to switch on the Christmas lights in Shrewsbury was cancelled and people lit candles in churches.
About 30 local people gathered in the drizzle on Wednesday at a war memorial in Garreg for prayers.
The Rev Roland Barnes said: “We pray for the four youngsters tragically killed, taken from their loved ones in the prime of life. We know the slenderness of the thread that separates life from death and the suddenness with which that thread can be broken.”
Prayers at Garreg pic.twitter.com/m7Iusiu7J7
— steven morris (@stevenmorris20) November 22, 2023
Speaking afterwards, he said: “These were four young people full of life and a sense of adventure who came on a trip to Wales. We want to encourage young people to do that, but it has ended so tragically. The weather can be awful. The roads are so windy and narrow, but that’s all part of the adventure.”
People left flowers and messages at the memorial. One woman, who had travelled from Harlech, where one of the boys is believed to have family, left a lantern she had bought for Christmas and four red roses, one for each of the boys.
Her card read: “Four inspiring lives have come to an end. The people of Harlech share your grief. Please find strength from this and all the love from Wales. We too are distraught. May their beautiful souls RIP.”
A second read: “May their spirits soar joyfully in the winds of freedom floating amongst the Moelwyns [mountain range] and Cnicht [a nearby peak].”
