Cwmbran man dies when an out-of-control truck careers down hill in Bath

Four-year-old girl who died named as Mitzi Rosanna Steady.

Two men from Swansea Phil Allen, 52 and Stephen Vaughan, 34, also died.

UPDATE: 2.00pm

Two businessmen and a newlywed chauffeur were the other victims of the Bath crash tragedy.

Executive taxi driver Stephen Vaughan, 34, had been called to Bath to collect the two passengers in his luxury Volvo saloon.

He had collected Phil Allen, a company director of electricity company Western Power, and a business colleague who were both killed in the crash.

Father-of-two Mr Allen, 52, was resources and external affairs director for the Cardiff-based power company.

Newly-wed Mr Vaughan was business manager of EliteXecutive Travel, based in Swansea, who was hired by a company to collect the two other victims from Bath.

The taxi was due to drop his first passenger 50 miles away in Cwmbran, before carrying on another 50 miles to take Mr Allen back to his home in Swansea.

Mr Allen was married to wife Caroline, 53, and the couple lived in Loughor, near Swansea. They have a son Daniel, 23, and daughter Hayley, 26. His family were today being comforted by other relatives.

Mr Vaughan married his wife Sian in August last year in a beach wedding at the Flamingo Hotel in Fethiye, Turkey. She was today described as "absolutely distraught" by friends at their home in Penyrheol, Swansea.

Mr Vaughan and his brother Andrew established EliteXecutive Travel in 2007 after years of being involved in airport transfers.

A professional profile on his company website states he had previously worked for “a large blue chip company” managing transport and logistics.

The company operates high-end vehicles which include Mercedes E-class vehicles described as “ideal for business clients or couples looking for luxury travel”.

The 59-year-old Cwmbran man has not yet been named.

UPDATE: 10.59am

A CWMBRAN man died when an out-of-control truck careered down a hill in Bath.

The 59-year-old man was in a car with two other men from Swansea aged 52 and 34, who also died.

The four-year-old girl walking with her grandmother who died after the crash has been named as Mitzi Rosanna Steady.

Avon and Somerset Police said Mitzi's grandmother, who was walking with her, remains in a critical condition in hospital.

In a short statement, the little's girl family, from Bath, said: "Mitzi Rosanna Steady, aged four, loved and missed by us all."

A police spokesman said: "The family has asked for privacy at this difficult time."

The Scania truck carrying sand and gravel hit the pedestrians before overturning onto a Volvo at the bottom Lansdown Lane in Bath just after 4pm yesterday, leaving a scene described by one witness as "absolute carnage".

The grandmother remains in a critical condition in hospital along with two other people with minor injuries, including the truck driver.

Chief Inspector Norman Pascal said: "This is a tragic incident in which three men and a young girl have lost their lives and we're carrying out a full and meticulous investigation to find out what happened.

"The tipper truck has been recovered and will undergo a full examination and our investigators will be carrying out further inquiries at the scene today.

"We have specially-trained family liaison officers supporting the victims' families to make sure they have all the help they need and are being kept updated on the progress of our investigation.

"We'd like to speak to anyone who was in the Lansdown Lane area of Bath around the time of the incident to come forward with any information, if they haven't already spoken to one of our officers."

A man who desperately tried to help those killed has described the aftermath.

Brian Fisher, 53, was working nearby with a colleague when he heard the 32-tonne lorry's windows blow out.

He said: "It was carnage, absolute carnage."

Mr Fisher's colleague called 999 and relayed details of the casualties to the emergency operator.

Mr Fisher said: "He went further up the road and that's where he saw the little girl. We went to the silver car in which the three people died. We didn't see it at first, it was at the other side of the lorry. We rushed there and tried to do what we could, to lift bits of the car off and get them out, but you wouldn't recognise it as a car.

"I couldn't even tell you what make it was - the damage was that bad.

"There was a nurse who tried to clear a guy's airway but it didn't work. I don't know where they found the third person because we only found two.

"I spoke to a police officer who said that in 25 years he had never seen anything like this.

The devastation was clear today, with garden walls and road signs crushed on the floor.

A sign reading "school" lay in a pile of metal rubble next to bricks, bollards and foliage which had been ripped from a nearby garden.

The lorry's load was spilled onto the road, leaving sand across the pavement of Lansdown Lane in Upper Weston.

Early witness reports given to police suggest that the driver of the tipper lorry, who was injured in the incident, had been trying to avert an accident.

The area was busy with parents collecting children from school.

"There are obviously a number of witnesses who would have seen aspects of the collision, and we do know the tipper finally came to a corner, has lost control and come over and lost aggregate across the floor," Chief Superintendent Caroline Peters said.

Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster described the incident as "obviously devastating, tragic and awful".

"The community is in shock, both for the families of those killed and also those who have been affected," he said.

"We are still waiting to get more details as to what the cause was. It is obviously devastating, tragic and awful, but until we know more we cannot speculate."

The tragedy comes less than two months after a bin lorry veered out of control in Glasgow city centre, killing six, and is likely to lead to renewed scrutiny of regulations on the use of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in built-up areas.

But Edmund King, the president of the AA, said banning HGVs from residential roads would be difficult.

"Most of our goods in our shops are actually delivered by heavy goods vehicles or relatively large vehicles," he said.

"Construction work goes on in our towns and villages and requires larger vehicles, so it is actually quite difficult to say large vehicles should be banned because some of them may be there for good reason."

The crash in Bath is reminiscent of a horrific accident in 1993 in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, when six people died after a tipper truck carrying 20 tonnes of gravel lost control on a steep hill, colliding with a van and then a shop.

The driver of the truck and the van were both killed, as were four pedestrians including a two-year-old girl. The truck was found to have eight faulty brakes, but the only successful charge against the company was a failure to maintain the brakes, resulting in a £5,000 fine.

The bereaved families fought successfully to overturn a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to bring a charge of manslaughter against the company, but by the time the firm was eventually charged the evidence was insufficient to gain a conviction.

The national road safety charity Brake was founded in the UK in 1995 in the aftermath of another crash which involved a freight lorry which lost a wheel as it was not roadworthy.