Viola Beach: crash killed band and manager was awful tragedy, coroner says

Viola Beach: crash that killed band and manager was awful tragedy, coroner says

Four members of a British indie band and their manager died after their car crashed through two motorway barriers before striking a bridge and falling 80ft (25 metres) into a shipping canal, an inquest has heard.

Craig Tarry, the 32-year-old manager, was driving the band back to a hotel in Stockholm in the early hours of the morning after they had played at a Swedish music festival.

The four-piece Warrington-based band had flown out from Manchester the night before and were considered “very much in the ascendancy” with foreign tours planned and a slot at Glastonbury.

The inquest into their deaths, held at Cheshire coroner’s court in Warrington, heard all five died at around 2am on 13 February earlier this year following the “inexplicable” crash.

 

As the car drove down the motorway, flashing yellow lights warned that a section of road ahead was being raised to allow a vessel to pass underneath, the inquest heard.

Singer Kris Leonard, 20, guitarist River Reeves, 19, drummer Jack Dakin, 19, and Tarry died from head injuries sustained when the car plunged into the waterway; bass guitarist Tomas Lowe, 27, drowned. The inquest heard that the rented Nissan Qashqai took just two seconds to fall into the chilly canal.

A postmortem examination revealed that Tarry had not been drinking and had no traces of alcohol or illegal drugs in his blood.

 

Swedish police said that one of the warning lights on the E4-20 northbound carriageway, 18 miles west of Stockholm, was not been working, but that there were almost a dozen other lights and signals that were operating.

The bridge was raised to allow a tanker to pass through the Södertälje canal when the band’s vehicle overtook queueing traffic before moving to the centre of the road.

 

Black and white CCTV footage of the Nissan on the motorway was shown to the band’s family members at the inquest.

 

Witnesses told Swedish police that the Nissan stopped behind other vehicles at the barrier before squeezing past them on the hard shoulder and through the first of the barriers. The vehicle then went through another barrier and struck the partially open bridge at an estimated 56mph before falling into the canal.

 

The inquest heard that Tarry would have had time to stop the vehicle after hitting the first barrier but it continued in the middle of the road and hit the second barrier.

PC Michael Baddeley, who was sent to Sweden by the coroner to investigate the accident, told the inquest that Tarry, appeared to have complete control of the vehicle up until hitting the first barrier, and had sufficient distance to react and stop before crashing into the bridge.