Three people were killed and several others injured when a lorry ploughed into a queue of stationary traffic on a motorway on 15 July 2021. The truck driver had been browsing dating sites on his phone and failed to stop

At 18:15 GMT on a hot, sunny summer evening the busy A1(M) near Durham had been brought to a standstill by a spillage of handbrake fluid.

Police call handler Hilary Thompson was on her way to start her 12-hour night shift - she normally answers 999 calls but on this day she would be making one.

Molly Smith, a 26-weeks pregnant physiotherapist, was heading home to Tyneside via a pet store to get her dog a birthday present, but she would end the day in hospital.

Elsewhere among the stalled cars, vans and lorries, David Daglish and his partner Elaine Sullivan were on their way home to Seaham and Paul Mullen was travelling to Washington, but they would never make it out of the tailback.

Because of Ion Nicu Onut, all three would soon be dead.

Since joining the A1 at York some 55 miles south, Onut had barely been off his mobile phone.

As he neared the exit for Bowburn and Durham service station, he was immersed in setting up dates online, and he failed to notice the traffic ahead of him had ground to a halt.

Ms Thompson could see Onut fast approaching in her mirrors.

"I thought to myself 'wow, he's going fast for the distance, he's got to stop for this traffic'," she said, adding: "And then I thought 'he's not going to stop'."

Travelling at 58mph, Onut smashed first into Mr Daglish and Ms Sullivan's Vauxhall Crossland, sparking a ferocious fireball.

The HGV then ploughed into Mr Mullen's Toyota Hilux which was crushed against another lorry.

Two other cars - including Ms Smith's - were also hit before the fertiliser-laden lorry finally came to a standstill on the central reservation 330ft (100m) away.

The cab erupted into flames and the Vauxhall had been rendered an unrecognisable mass of twisted black metal.

Michael Hosty, another lorry driver, kicked in Onut's windscreen and pulled him from the wreckage.

"It was like a comet on fire," Mr Hosty told police a short while later.

Ms Smith was jolted with the impact from behind, and heard a deafening screech of crushing metal as she suddenly found her air-conditioned car surrounded by fire.

#motorway #uk #durham #crash

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