Teenage girl left ‘traumatised’ after fridge-freezer feel from truck and hit family car on A326 near Holbury
A HOLBURY teenager is now "traumatised" after a fridge-freezer fell from a truck and smashed into the family car on a busy main road. Her mother, Cathy McRedmond, slammed the "disgusting" driver for failing to stop and said the incident left the 17-year-old needing counselling and physiotherapy. Mrs McRedmond's husband Patrick had been driving their daughter home along the A326 in the early evening of on 5th February when the first of two such appliances flew past them.
Dislodged from a trailer towed by an oncoming Volkswagen, it was quickly followed by a second which struck the family's Vauxhall Zafira.
"My husband swerved, thankfully, as it would have gone through the windscreen otherwise," Mrs McRedmond told the A&T. As well as writing off the car, the collision left their daughter with whiplash, spinal soft tissue damage, and hand numbness caused by nerve damage to her neck.
"My husband is fine, although he's obviously shaken up," Mrs McRedmond continued. "However, our daughter is really struggling.
It's not just the physical injuries, but also the mental effect on her. She's traumatised. "She's not sleeping at all.
She hasn't been right since the accident - she won't even let me drive along that road.
"She had been due to start learning to drive. She was 17 on Sunday, but she won't even entertain driving now.
"She's going to need counselling as well as physiotherapy." Mrs McRedmond, a private nurse, said she had to leave work and drive her daughter to Southampton hospital because of a two-and-a-half-hour wait for an ambulance.
The incident has affected their daughter's studies, she said, as the teenager had since gone into college for a pre-A-level exam. A special concession had to be made to allow her to take regular breaks as the neck injury prevented her from sitting to write for long periods. Although praising the college for its support, Mrs McRedmond expected this to "certainly have an effect" on grades.
"It's just been diabolical, the whole thing," she said. "The fact that this person had no inclination to stop is just disgusting.
"Ideally, I want this person to come forward, just do the right thing and admit what they've done. "Ultimately, it could have resulted in fatalities.
Even the police said that - if the fridge-freezer had gone through the windscreen, they wouldn't have been here today." Mrs McRedmond had since heard reports the truck was spotted earlier that day parked outside Holbury's parade of shops on Long Lane. It was said to have had at least 10 fridge-freezers on the back of the trailer, with no high sides and secured by only a thin length of blue rope.
She called for businesses along the parade to check their CCTV for footage of the truck, and for anyone who might have had their fridge-freezer collected by the driver to contact police.
"My thinking is that if he's done it once, he could do it again and this could potentially result in a fatality, so it is in the public interest to find him," Mrs McRedmond added. A Hampshire police spokesperson told the A&T investigations were continuing in a bid to identify the truck driver. Those with information should contact officers online via hampshire.police.uk or call 101, quoting reference 44250055494.
Crimestoppers can also be contacted anonymously via crimestoppers-uk.org or on 0800 555 111.