Weeping farmer tells inquest of son’s tragic death

Harry Sowerby had jumped out of his father Richard’s Land Rover Discovery to open the heavy metal gate and stop it swinging into the side of the vehicle as it pulled into the yard of West End Farm, near Askrigg, in Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales.

As Mr Sowerby climbed out to start unloading, his mother-in-law Jolene Easton came running up to say something was wrong with Harry, the tearful father told the hearing at Richmond Town Hall.

He said: “I had pulled alongside him and said to stop swinging on granny’s gate. I thought he was tagging on behind me as normal.”

Mr Sowerby, who had been delivering the concrete block to his mother-in-law’s farm, found the boy lying face down in a pool of blood by the gate.

Mrs Easton had just come home from the village. She said: “I saw what I first thought was a coat on the floor by the gate. Then I realised it was Harry as I got closer.

“I ran up to him and said: ‘What have you done to yourself?’ I could not believe what I was seeing.

“I ran around to get Richard. We both went up to where Harry was laid. Richard picked him up straightaway and we went around to the other side of the house and called an ambulance.

“My first thought was that he had fallen off the gate. It did not occur to me that he had been run over. But I could not understand why he had injuries like that just from falling off a gate.”

The ambulance service wanted the family to give Harry the kiss of life and heart massage. But Mrs Easton said it was already clear that her grandson was beyond help.

Harry, who lived on his parents’ farm in Thwaite Bridge, near Hawes, in Wensleydale, was flown by air ambulance to Harrogate District Hospital the same afternoon of the accident last July but died from multiple injuries.

The tragedy was also witnessed by Harry’s sister Bethany, who had also gone with their father to help unload the concrete blocks.

The hearing was told that Mr Sowerby had been travelling very slowly and there was plenty of room to get past where Harry was standing.

The police investigation concluded that the boy was already prone on the ground when the wheels went over him. But it was not immediately clear how he had ended up on the floor.

Police accident investigator Tc Stephen Kirkbright believed Harry had let the gate go while still hanging on it. It had then hit the trailer and the boy had been hurled beneath the trailer wheels, which caused the fatal injuries.

The hearing was told that with the Land Rover’s diesel engine running and the sound of the trailer the father would have not even heard the strike of the gate.

Tc Kirkbright thought Harry, who had opened the gate many times for his father before, had forgotten the trailer was there and “had taken the opportunity to have one last little ride on this gate and there has been a tragedy”.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, North Yorkshire West Coroner Rob Turnbull said: “This is a very close knit family. I am absolutely certain Harry was much loved and cared for in all aspects of his life.

“He clearly enjoyed spending time with his dad and even at this tender age had ambitions to go into farming.

“I can only offer my very sincere condolences to the family for your tragic loss and just hope you can recover from that eventually.”