Ten years on, driver who caused Selby rail disaster refuses to awaken to truth

Gary Hart’s Land Rover plunged off the M62 on to the East Coast mainline at Great Heck, a few miles south of Selby, on February 28, 2001.

The vehicle was struck by a GNER passenger train which partly derailed and collided head-on with a Freightliner. Six passengers and four rail staff died including both drivers, and 82 people were injured.

Hart served 30 months of a five-year jail term after being convicted of 10 charges of causing death by dangerous driving.

Speaking on the tenth anniversary of the crash, the 47-year-old denied he should have been held responsible for the deaths.

“I believe in fate and I was meant to be there that morning,” he said. “The accident occurred because I was there.

“The same for the people that were on the train. They were meant to be there that morning.”

At Hart’s trial, the jury heard he fell asleep at the wheel after staying up all night chatting on the phone to Kristeen Panter, a Scunthorpe woman he contacted through an internet dating agency. But yesterday he claimed others should have been held accountable for what happened.

“As far as being asleep at the wheel, that’s what I went to prison for, it’s not what the truth is,” he said. “No deaths occurred at the point of impact with my Land Rover.

“They all occurred 700 yards down the track which I feel other people should have been held accountable for, so in my own head I’ve dealt with it in that fashion.

“There’s not a day gone by that I haven’t thought about Selby. I do feel for the families because it was a horrendous, horrible way to go, die.”

Dozens of families, survivors, railway workers and officials will gather for a memorial service at St Paul’s Church in Hensall at 1.30pm today before proceeding to a private event at a memorial garden overlooking the crash site.

Painful memories have returned in the days leading to the anniversary and some of the victims’ relatives are likely to be too upset to attend the ceremonies.

The family of Stephen Dunn, who was driving the freight train, said it was “a particularly hard time” for them but they had tried to rebuild their lives.

In a joint statement, Mr Dunn’s widow Mary and sons Andrew and James, who lived in Brayton, near Selby, at the time of the crash but have since moved to the south of England, said: “We would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who has helped us through the past decade.

“Today we will be thinking of Steve, the husband and Daddy, who died doing the job he considered a paid hobby.”

James Dunn, who was nine when the crash happened, has followed his father into the rail industry and is now an engineering train driver with Tube Lines, a company which maintains and upgrades parts of the London Underground.

Hart, originally from Strubby, Lincolnshire, was released in 2004. The prize-winning archer, who studied art in prison, has since started a new life in Abertillery, South Wales.

It is understood that North Yorkshire Police officers considered asking colleagues in Gwent Police to advise Hart not to attend today’s ceremonies.

Today’s events in Yorkshire will be preceded by a service at Newcastle railway station for the four train crew who lost their lives in the crash.

The Reverend Stephen Sorby, a railway chaplain who will lead the memorial services, said: “I think it will be a particularly emotional day because the people affected have gone through different journeys over the last few days.

“It has been really revealing to see how they have suffered, how they are still suffering and how the images they have seen are still very raw. It was carnage, but I want today to be a thanksgiving for the lives of those people who died and to try to take a step forward to acceptance.”

Great Heck resident Peter Hintze, 70, a retired power station worker whose house was almost hit by the freight train, said the tragedy was still felt by many in the village. “It was an experience I wouldn’t ever want to go through again. It took quite a while to put everything away in my mind.

“Great Heck will always be remembered for the crash. It became known to many as the Selby rail crash, but it happened in our tiny village.”