22/12/2016 Points West

The carnage was caused by terrible maintenance from the haulage company

who cut corners to save money, leaving relatives to grieve.

I think a spark has definitely gone out in my heart, even though he's

The driver was only a teenager at the time.

We have an exclusive interview, as the jury decides

The hardest bit is when you go to sleep, just seeing the carnage

unfolding in your head, when it happened.

It's like you press replay in your head every night you

go to close your eyes and you just see it.

How many other cowboy companies are out there who don't

Two years on, I'm back in Weston to find out how the community

is coping with the tragedy as it approaches another Christmas.

It's Christmas, but I'm afraid there's little festive cheer tonight

after a jury came back with a devastating verdict

on the tipper-truck crash in Bath which claimed four lives,

Haulage boss Matthew Gordon and mechanic Peter Wood,

both from Wiltshire, were convicted of manslaughter

after a trial exposed the shocking state of the lorry.

The young driver, Philip Potter, broke down in tears

Afterwards, the police made this statement.

The fact of the matter is that both men failed in their duty

Matthew Gordon had no transport manager and effectively flouted

every regulation laid down to ensure safety.

Peter Wood signed off vehicles as safe when,

Many of the faults at the time of this crash were long-standing.

Both were aware of previous problems with the brakes on this vehicle

and did not take action when they had a duty to.

They picked up the last load of the day from a quarry. They drove in

convoy along the M4, past bat with racecourse before heading down the

notoriously steep Lansdown Lane. This is a fully laden 32 tonne

Scania tipper truck. At the width restriction, one truck stop, but

Phillip Archer could not stop, the Brits had failed. The X brother died

the hill he swerved to avoid the bus and hit and killed for you two and

injured her granny, Margaret Rogers. Seconds later he struck a car. The

three men inside died instantly and they were Stephen Von, a chauffeur,

and two businessmen, Robert Parker and Philip Allen. The runaway tipper

truck came to a stop on its side. In less than ten minutes, the lives of

poor families had been shattered. the two businessmen from Bath

and take them back to Wales. He had been married

for just six months. His widow, Sian, has been

describing her husband Everybody he came into contact

with instantly took a shine to him. Very much a cheeky chappie,

but I think that went in his favour Just a very, very

likeable gentleman. How long had the two

of you been together? We had been together

just over four years. We were married in 2014,

on 27th August, out in Turkey, which was one of our holiday

destinations that we We fell in love with it,

and fell in love with each You said that you had said goodbye,

kissed him goodbye. Then what happened for

you and for him that day. We both went out our

separate ways with work. I contacted Steve at about 12:30pm,

like we did every day, just to see how each other's

days were going. He said he would be home

at the same time as me, roughly at about five o'clock

in the evening. He had a call coming in so I had

to rush off the phone. I said I loved him and he obviously

was rushing to get off the phone and he didn't get to say it back,

and that was the last It was just horrendous,

to be told that your husband has been hit by a 32-tonne tipper-truck

and dragged down the road in the car, and all the emotions,

really, that went with that. And being asked if I could

identify him the next day. You say all the emotions,

can you describe for me what emotions you felt,

and what this journey has been like for you over the last nearly

two years since that moment Just completely lost, really,

like as if you have had your right arm or your left arm chopped off,

and there's that piece just missing. I think a spark has definitely

gone out in my heart, It has just been a horrendous time,

I wouldn't wish it on anybody. You have sat through

so much of the court case. What have been the hardest things

to hear in terms of the evidence Mainly that things could have been

avoided and, potentially, I would have had Steve with the now

by my side. I would never have had to go

through all of this. And, hopefully, if that was

the case, we would have had a family by now which we've been denied,

whereas the owner of the company has gone on to have a child and has one

on the way, as well. I feel very upset over that,

that he's gone on to have a life The only person to walk free

from court today was the young man behind the wheel

of the tipper truck. The jury decided Philip Potter was

the victim of an unscrupulous boss. These are the pictures,

shown in court, of the rusty His defence argued it was

"an accident destined to occur". Philip Potter has been speaking

exclusively to our Social Affairs The hardest bit is when you go

to sleep is just seeing the carnage unfolding in your head

when it happened. It is like you press replay

in your head every night you go to close your eyes

and you just see it. Just thinking of the four

people all the time. Thinking how horrible it must

be for the families, just how hard it would be to lose

someone you love so much. Walking free from court today,

the driver of the tipper-truck, Philip Potter, broke down in tears

after being cleared It was just under two years ago

that his life was to change forever. The 19-year-old worked

on his family's farm. To earn extra money,

he had taken an apprenticeship with this distant cousin, Matthew

Gordon at Grittenham Haulage. He was only days into the job

when he climbed into the truck Because it was not under any great

braking pressures because I wasn't going down any hills,

there wasn't really much at all. Obviously, the hill that I went down

was very, very steep. I had never been down

it before in my life. The court was told and amber warning

light had come on on his dashboard, indicating a potential problem

with the brakes. Phillip said he reported this

to his boss and was told, I was going round the

first couple of bends. I didn't know the road at all,

so I was not rushing at all. Going down the hill I see him come

to a halt at a traffic calming. At that point it was coming

into a 20, I was doing about 25. I could see that we were coming

into a 20 so I applied the brakes a little bit more

and there was just nothing. It was holding, but it

wouldn't slow down any more. I slammed it into a lower gear

and tried to handbrake and just held my hand on the horn and just

dropped my arms solid because I didn't know what else

I could possibly try and do. I just wanted to warn people

that there was a lorry By the time he managed to stop

the truck, four people were dead. Philip Potter was taken to hospital,

where his mother confirmed to him You remember when they told you that

Philip had been driving The police had said that he's

in such a state that we can't really get anything out of him

at the moment, He was in a hell of a state

and they told me then the talent he is before I went

in to see him and he said, Mum, He just needed someone to confirm

that it was what he thought it was. I can remember just hugging him

and saying, Philip, if you couldn't We believed him straightaway

because we knew he has been driving vehicles for so long that if he had

no brakes, he had no brakes. He said, I was trying to warn people

to get out of the way. He said I was like that,

get out of the way, because I was trying to get

it to stop. I was trying to stop it

and I couldn't stop it. Do you think about

those people who died? We had trees planted

on the anniversary We have the vicar in to bless

them because we thought Because Philip is never

going to forget that. The family is never going to forget

it, so it was the right thing. Four young trees to mark

the four lives lost. This one is for Mitzi because once

it's blooming it comes out pink. It is always going to be

here for the rest of my life. It might just be me that

will know about them, but in my heart I know

what they are there for. A quiet minute, come up, think about

what happened that day, really. Yeah, in a way because if I hadn't

have been in the lorry then it wouldn't have been me,

but it could have happened to any driver that was in it

because of this state of the lorry. So, yeah, if it wasn't me it

would have been someone else, so it was going to happen at some

point, which is the worst Philip Potter says he will never

forget those terrible He knows that he can't rewind

the clock, but after today's verdict, clearing him from any

crime, 30-year-old Matthew Gordon

was Philip Potter's boss. Tonight, we can reveal more shocking

news about his firm, After the crash, Gordon,

admitted eight offences of exceeding driving hours in the three months

before the accident. His company pleaded guilty

to 33 similar offences. Last September, the Traffic

Commissioner disqualified him and took away his operating licence

for two years. Scott Ellis has been finding out

more about the lorry boss and the mechanic who're tonight

awaiting sentence in prison. Phillip Potter may have been

at the wheel of the runaway lorry, but the blood is on the hands

of Matthew Gordon. He is, above all others,

to blame for the crash. And he knew it the moment

tragedy struck deciding, amid the loss of life,

not to call the emergency services or admit to a police officer

he owned the overturned truck and telling the injured driver

not to mention a brake warning light was on,

before disappearing Grittenham Haulage was based here

at White s Farm near Brinkworth. It was Matthew Gordon's first

business and it's been described as a "shambles from start

to finish", and that he didn't have "a grip on how to maintain

a fleet of lorries", either because he didn't know

the rules, or he didn't care. It seems he'd put

profit before safety. Scania tipper-trucks have a drum

brake on each of their eight wheels, but in Matthew Gordon's lorry,

six were not adjusted correctly. The jury were shown photos of these

bodged brake repairs. Gordon said he didn't cut corners

when it came to maintenance. The jury, and this Wiltshire HGV

instructor, think otherwise. You could almost call them cowboys.

Running trucks is expensive, it could cost ?2000 per truck per

month. Simply by not doing maintenance properly, you those

This driver's worked for Gordon for a short time but left.

I nearly made the mistake of going to work for him again, until I saw

the equipment. It checked out the lorry and the trailer and I wasn't

He also says Gordon rushed his drivers to get more

That is backed up by evidence in court -

that Gordon texted his partner complaining Potter was slow.

You can only do what you can't eat in the time period, no questions

asked. I wasn't being pushed about, I wasn't being bullied, and that's

Other drivers told us it's an industry-wide problem.

There are a lot of Billy Boyd owners. If you don't do it, somebody

If you don't do it, somebody else will do it.

The haulage industry is closely regulated.

Checks are made on operators at MoT's and at roadside inspections.

So, will the Bath crash be a wake-up call for the industry?

I hope people have learned from it. I don't know. Only time will tell

Mattthew Gordon's mechanic, Peter Wood, is also guilty

of manslaughter, having recorded no defects on the lorry's brakes

when he inspected it a few weeks before the crash.

In a statement today, Mitzi Steady s family said nothing

can bring their daughter back and they will miss her every day

They also continue, this "verdict sends a clear message that

where non-compliance results in injury or death, excuses and lies

will not stand in court and serve only to cause further upset

Joining us now from London is Duncan Buchanan from

Was this company and member of your organisation? At the time of the

incident, no they weren't. What I would like to say is my sympathy

does go to everyone who has been affected by this incident. It was a

truly shocking incident and everything in your reports indicates

just how terrible it was. But they have joined your organisation now.

What do you make of the conduct of the firm? The conduct of the firm

was completely unacceptable. They joined our organisation after the

incident in an effort to try and legitimise themselves. They had an

audit done on the compliance with operators licensing. That all the

joy that they were noncompliant in a huge range of areas. To an

unforgivable extent. It really is the shameful example of an

organisation failing to meet the most minimum of standards. The big

question is how they got away with it and high many other cowboy

operators are driving 32 tonne trucks which have not been properly

maintained. Fortunately, this is not a very common issue for this level

of noncompliance. This is probably the most serious one I have ever

seen in the industry. So, I would not actually cast the entirety of

the injury -- industry with this level of noncompliance. Do you know

that? Is the system in place that works well to flag up when there are

concerns? There are systems in place that noncompliant operators. There

is a comprehensive point-scoring system that assesses operators and

targets operators for on road enforcement and four in force within

the premises. Where were they then in this case? In this particular

case, you would probably need to discuss that with the PDSA. From the

Road haulage Association's perspective, we recognise that

enforcement is probably not at the level we would like to see. We would

like to see more on road enforcement done. We recognise the good work

that the imports when people do, but there is not enough of them. We will

have to leave it there. Thank you for coming on the programme tonight.

It's now been nearly two years since the accident in the close-knit

Our Bath reporter Ali Vowles has returned to the scene of the crash

I am at the bottom of the Lansdown Lane at the roundabout looking up at

the hill but the accident happened on that fateful afternoon in

February. The traffic then was stopped. There was an eerie silence

is all the media waiting here, myself included, desperately tried

to find out what was happening, such a contrast to the busyness of the

road tonight. I have been finding out how this community and hope that

the time and how it is healing its scars.

It was just after four in the afternoon on the ninth of debris

2015 when the brakes on Phillip Archer's truck field on the

victorious road. Four people lost their lives, two were seriously

injured. When I arrived, it was the scene of carnage, really. At the

scene. Ed Valentine, have volunteered with a Wiltshire -based

charity. Working closely with all of the ambulance, he coordinated the

medical care that was needed. Everyone was completely shocked that

the scale of the devastation. At the time you deal with that in a

professional way, we have a job to do and we do that. Afterwards, when

you reflect on what has happened, you go back to your family, I think

that is the time it gets very, very difficult, and that is the hardest

thing that we all do our best, the emergency services did the best that

night, but there are still... I think everyone involved was badly

affected and it will stay with all of us probably for the rest of our

lives. The day after the events showed the full scale of what

happened on that short but very deadly journey. So close to the

accident sets of primary school with more than 400 pupils. Thankfully, on

that day most of those pupils had already gone home, but some were in

an after-school club. That is where Mitzi and her granny were heading to

pick up her siblings. Those pupils were cared for by staff for hours as

the emergency services dealt with the aftermath of the tragedy. To

begin with, flowers for the Vic Timms work laid outside the school

walls. Although in total shock and disbelief. Little Mitzi was

well-known to everyone. The Coast community of Western was stunned and

both churches opened the next day. The place as the church at the

bottom of Lansdown Lane to receive the mounting number of flowers, a

place away from the busy road and the safer place to pay respects and

grief. People brought the flowers for weeks, wanting to make a

tribute. I was here when the people came from South Wales to bring the

floral tributes to the family for those people who had died in the

family. I don't think people could really believe it had happened here

in Western, something so dreadful. But having said that, there had been

a lot of concern about the heavy traffic using Lansdown Lane, so to

imagine that it it happens in our village was awful. Two years on and

life is moving on in Western. A memorial play area has been built at

the school in the Mitzi's name and toddlers groups, societies,

gardening clubs, are all getting on with daily life in the busy

community, but it has not been easy. It was extremely sad, but also

horrendously traumatic and I think that is why it will leave its mark

for a very long time. Everybody... The schoolchildren are very young.

It is not something you can spent a long time dwelling on comic you have

to move on. No one will ever forget what happened here, but all those

who can are now trying to look to the future.

Despite this horrendous accident, nothing seems to have been done

about the volume of traffic and the speed at which the vehicles go. It

is a 20 mile an hour zone. We understand that Mitzi's that has

been discussions with the council and tomorrow night will be -- we

will be talking to parents who are determined that things will change.

In the meantime, all thoughts go to the families who are now spending

the second Christmas without loved ones.

Now with a look at the weather and what it could be

Good evening, everybody. Let's take you through the forecast for

tomorrow which will be the arm under the influence of storm Barbara. It

is going to be the north-western parts of the British Isles that will

bear the brunt of this. Its influence down he will be felt in

terms of an increasingly windy day. It will be wet in the afternoon, as

well. Here are five things are shaping up, I week weather front

keeping things drive. In the north-west you can see storm Barbara

forming. For us, as this call from runs through June the afternoon that

will usher in a wet spell of weather. That is where we will see

the peak of the winds. For the rest of this evening, the few showers

will die out. A fairly quiet night, initially the wind is fairly light,

turning chilly under those conditions. By daybreak the breeze

is starting to pick up. The coldest days of the night, we could get a

hint of frost trying to form, maybe the odd patch of Bob. That will not

be the case by tomorrow morning with the wind is already starting to pick

up. A lot of dry weather to the first part of the day. The Black

Arrow showed that wind gusts in miles an hour. The gusts could get

up to 60 miles an hour. Difficult driving conditions. It will remain

-- remain breezy in the evening, turning colder. Let's fast forward a

cross into Christmas Eve. It is looking a genuinely Friday. It will

remain breezy yet not rather windy, and that will feel that bit chillier

as well with the change in the air mass. Up towards the north-west,

signs of another storm developing overnight and into Christmas

morning. Again, it will be the far northern parts of the British Isles

most influenced. The net result for us heading into Christmas Day will

be initially at fairly mild tablecloths applied around the

Brazilian rain, breezy or a windy. Tomorrow, we'll be back at 6.30pm

with some festive fun as it's our last long programme

before Christmas and this year. Tonight though - as we have done

every night this week - we'll leave you to enjoy another

carol. This evening it's the Rising

Voices Recovery Choir performing 'Silent Night'

in the Bristol Unitarian Church. Silent night.

Holy night. All is calm.

All is bright. Round the virgin, mother and child.

Holy infant, so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace.

Sleep in the heavenly peace.