An 11-year-old boy died in a horrific car crash in the UK after a spider dropped onto his mom’s hand as she drove — sparking a frenzy that sent her car careening into a 4×4 hauling a trailer of sheep, a probe of the case revealed this week.
Tristan Silver and his sister, 8-year-old Branwen, were in the car one morning in May 2018 near Tregaron, Ceredigion, Wales, as their mom, Cloud Younger, drove them to school, an inquest heard this week, according to the BBC.
Suddenly, the arachnid landed on Younger’s left hand, causing Branwen, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, to start screaming hysterically, Younger said during her first interview, the outlet reported.
Younger turned her attention to her daughter to calm her down.
But she was so distracted that her Subaru drifted onto the wrong side of a highway and hit a black Mitsubishi towing a trailer full of sheep in the village of Olmarch, Ceredigion coroner Peter Brunton revealed during the inquest.
When cops initially Younger asked why she didn’t stop, she replied, “No comment,” according to the report.
Younger did not provide any evidence at the inquest, and when the coroner asked her if she had anything to add, she replied, “If I could remember more, I would have said more,” the outlet reported.
It’s unclear how fast Younger was driving on the 60-mph road, but the Mitsubishi driver, farmer David Glyndwr Jones, testified that his car was almost at a standstill after it was struck, according to the report.
“At first it was straddling the white line, about a quarter of the vehicle on the wrong side,” Jones said. “Then it came all the way over to my side and I could see it wasn’t going to stop.”
“All this happened in about six seconds — I just had enough time to warn my wife and brace myself,” he added. “I feel devastated by what happened. I don’t understand why she didn’t see us and drive back to her side.”
Brunton called the entire ordeal “an extremely sad and tragic inquest,” according to the report.
The investigation comes down to the manner in which Younger was driving during the “catastrophic seconds” she turned her attention to her daughter, she said.