Owner of farm where four boys died in car crash describes 'brutal' conditions
The owner of a farm where four teenagers tragically died in a car crash described the "brutal" conditions that saw them leave the road and smash into a water-filled ditch.
Farmer Rhys Williams lives at Garreg Hyll Drem Farm, just 25 metres from the ditch where four bodies were found at 10am on November 21, earlier this week. Jevon Hirst, 16, Harvey Owen, 17, Wilf Fitchett, 17, and Hugo Morris, 18, all studied at the same college and lived in Shrewsbury, Shropshire.
They had headed out on a camping trip in the picturesque Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park, but failed to return home, leaving loved ones raising the alarm. This led to a desperate manhunt as family and friends feared the worst before a passing binman spotted the silver Ford Fiesta they had been travelling in.
Mr Williams described the "brutal" conditions the teenagers were driving through when they went missing and their car plunged off a windy country road and overturned in a flooded ditch. It is not known when the fatal accident took place. Mr Williams said they were "so unlucky" to have left the road on a sharp bend, flipping their vehicle into a ditch that was flooded by two days of rain.
He told The Mirror: "It was brutal on Sunday. There's always a foot or two of water in the ditch but it can come up to six feet, the level of the car. It was bad on Friday and Saturday, the river had gone high quickly. But by Tuesday morning the level had come down. They were so unlucky. They could have hit a tree or a fence and gone in another way."
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Floral tributes in Garreg left in the memory of the four teenagers from Shrewsbury who were killed when their car left the road near the village in Snowdonia (Rowan Griffiths / Daily Mirror)The farmer continued: "They were found by the recycling lorry at 10 that morning. They were higher up, that's why they could see them. The binman told us they had phoned the police. It is only 25 metres around the corner from here. I could see the car but I didn't see anything else.
“They must have been going from Harlech north towards Snowdonia. This is one of two roads they could have taken. There are no tracks on the road, nothing to be seen. It's a sharp bend, it narrows. There were lots of leaves on that corner. There have been one or two accidents there before."
Harvey Owen was amongst the four teens who went missing (WALES NEWS SERVICE)
Jevon Hirst - all four boys were from Shrewsbury, Shropshire (WALES NEWS SERVICE)The Fiesta was removed from the scene on Tuesday evening. But officers returned to search the area by torchlight on Wednesday morning. Mr Williams explained how at least two buses and possible other cars would have driven past the crash site, none the wiser. He added: "They were so unlucky, the way the car went in. It has gone into the ditch, low into the ditch. It's a small car. I went past and didn't see anything. Two buses would have gone past before 10am and not seen anything.
Tributes poured in for Hugo Morris and his three pals (North Wales Police)
Wilf Fitchett was amongst the four boys named missing after they travelled to Snowdonia in a silver Ford Fiesta (North Wales Police)"They would have been there all Monday. You have got to be in a high vehicle to see anything and you have got to be looking, a passenger. The driver would have been looking at the road. The binman who saw it said that something caught his eye. He was on his phone and he looked over. You would struggle to see from a car. Some networks have no signal here. EE is good, but Vodafone is not good. On Sunday the water was high."
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