Death of Copmanthorpe rail crash victim John Power ‘will remain a mystery’

11:41am Thursday 19th November 2009

By Richard Catton

THE exact circumstances surrounding the death of a York father on a remote stretch of railway line near York “will remain a mystery”, according to the coroner at the end of a two-day inquest.

Donald Coverdale recorded an open verdict after evidence from a number of expert witnesses on the death of John Power, 54, whose car crashed on to the East Coast Mainline three years ago and was struck by a Virgin passenger train travelling at 100mph.

The hearing had been told how Mr Power, of St George’s Place, off Tadcaster Road, had left his wife and son in a York pub on the evening of September 25, 2006, to go to Tesco, in Tadcaster Road.

He was due to return to the pub at 10pm to pick up his wife but, inexplicably, decided to drive through the village of Copmanthorpe, where, at the end of Moor Lane, his Vauxhall Astra smashed through a wooden fence and on to the East Coast main line.

In the Guildhall in York yesterday, Richard Bell, who at the time of incident was a civil engineer with Network Rail, told how the stretch of road where Mr Power smashed through the fence had not been included in a safety assessment following the Selby rail crash in 2001.

The evening of the accident was damp and misty and the area around the fence was dark and had been described by a resident as a “black hole”.

Summing up, Mr Coverdale said he did not believe Mr Power had set out to kill himself, as he was “relaxed, happy and amiable” at the time. A heart attack or stroke was also ruled out at in a post mortem examination and, though he had been a diabetic, there was no evidence of a hypoglycaemic attack.

Mr Coverdale said: “I’m really at a loss to know why Mr Power was in Copmanthorpe and had driven down Moor Lane.”

He said: “I’m getting no closer to answering the question of what caused Mr Power to drive on to the railway line. The presence of Mr Power on the railway line will remain a mystery. The only verdict I can record today is an open verdict.”

After the hearing, solicitor Dianna Bamforth, on behalf of Mr Power’s family, said they were relieved suicide had been ruled out.

She said: “We have all been devastated by the death of John he was happy and enjoyed spending time with his family and had everything to live for, and his death has left us with a large void. We have waited over three years for this inquest. This has been a very stressful time for all of us.”