Hero trainer tells how he rushed to help at scene of fatal Minehead school bus crash

A trainer has described how he was able to help children and adults injured in a fatal road accident on Exmoor on Thursday.

Alan Jones said the scene, which is approximately 600 metres from his yard, was “like a war zone” after a school bus with more than 70 children and adults from Minehead Middle School came off the road on the A396 Cutcombe Hill in Somerset, turning over and sliding down a six metre embankment.

Avon and Somerset Police confirmed on Friday that a ten-year-old boy had died in the accident, with three adults and four children remaining in hospital.

An off-duty firefighter who happened to be following the bus, which was bringing the children and adults back from an end-of-term visit to Exmoor Zoo, was able to offer immediate help, and Jones said he was on the scene within ten minutes, having been alerted to the accident by an owner.

Jones said: “One of my owners, who’d been in to see his horse, rang me and told me to avoid the area as the road was closed because of an accident and there was a school bus involved.

“Once I’d heard that I thought to myself maybe I could help as I had the quadbike and I could get across the fields to the scene rather than using the road.

“It felt like a war zone. The police asked what I was doing and I told them I had come to help, so they let me through. I saw two teachers sat on the road in front of me and they were just staring ahead, blank. There were children and adults laid out on the tarmac with drips, disoriented children walking up the road, a girl missing her fingers, so I did what I could to help them.”

Alan Jones: 'You always think of the worst when you hear about things like this, but when I got there it was worse than I thought it might be'Credit: Edward Whitaker

Using his quadbike, Jones ferried two teachers, one with a suspected broken elbow, roughly a mile and a half to the Rest And Be Thankful Inn in Wheddon Cross. In total, over the course of a hour and a quarter, Jones said he took eight adults and children from the accident scene to the pub, which had been set up as a “safe hub”.

“The children were being told to walk to the pub by the police, but they were disorientated and didn’t know where to go,” Jones said. “And there were emergency vehicles flying down the road to get to the site.

“You always think of the worst when you hear about things like this, but when I got there it was worse than I thought it might be, especially with there being children involved.”

Jones said there had been accidents on the road before, but that it had been better since being resurfaced in May. However, he added that warning messages on the road to slow down had not yet been replaced.

“It’s a very steep hill into a dog leg,” the former jockey said. “It reminds me a lot of when I used to ride at Plumpton when you’d be in a novice chase with Gary Moore and Jamie Osborne. Once you jump that fence at the top of the hill, you go flat out down the hill towards the ditch and into the bend, it’s just like that.”