M9 crash victim who lay undiscovered for three days was in 'incomprehensible’ pain as police blamed for failures
31 May 2024, 09:35 | Updated: 31 May 2024, 09:37
An ‘organisational failure’ in police call-handling systems left a woman with devastating injuries and her partner undiscovered in a car for three days, a fatal accident inquiry has found.
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Lamara Bell, 25, and John Yuill, 28, died after their car careered off the M9 near Stirling on 5 July 2015 as they drove back from a camping trip.
The pair lay in their Renault Clio for three days before they were discovered on 8 July - despite police having been alerted to the incident.
They were found after another member of the public rang police to report seeing it and emergency services went to investigate.
Father-of-five Mr Yuill was pronounced dead at the scene and Ms Bell, a mother-of-two, died four days later in hospital.
In his determination published following a fatal accident inquiry (FAI) into the incident, Sheriff James Williamson said there was no system of reconciling information recorded by officers in notebooks with action taken.
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He said: "The failure of Police Scotland to properly risk assess the call handling procedures and have a system of reconciliation was an organisational failure.
"An organisational failure which led to the safety of the public being compromised and to the events of July 5, 2015."
The inquiry heard Mr Yuill suffered unsurvivable injuries in the crash but Ms Bell would probably have survived if she had received medical treatment on July 5.
Sheriff Williamson noted the Bilston Glen police call handling centre was under pressure that summer due to staffing shortages, and there was confusion among some officers about the tripartite call handling system comprising the Aspire, Avaya and Storm systems.
Police sergeant Brian Henry, now retired, volunteered to do overtime at Bilston Glen, arriving into what the sheriff described as a "confused, fractious working environment".
The inquiry heard that on July 5 he took a call from farmer John Wilson reporting a car off the road and recorded it in his police notebook, but he failed to log it into the Storm case management system and no action was taken.
Sheriff Williamson found police had not identified the risk that calls might not be dealt with.
He said: "Brian Henry was inadequately trained and left largely unsupervised to operate a system that allowed for human error to go undetected.
"His human error going undetected meant that Lamara Bell was left in a vehicle by the side of a major motorway in Scotland suffering devastating injuries.
"These injuries, together with the delay in rescuing and treating her, led to her death."
Police Scotland repeated their apology to the families of Mr Yuill and Ms Bell, adding that "significant improvements" have been made to call handling systems since 2015.
The fatal accident inquiry came after the family of Ms Bell was awarded more than £1 million in damages from Police Scotland in a civil settlement in December 2021.
In September 2021, the force was fined £100,000 at the High Court in Edinburgh after it pleaded guilty to health and safety failings which "materially contributed" to Ms Bell's death.
Ms Bell's suffering over a period of three days, when she was severely injured but conscious, is "almost incomprehensible”, Sheriff Williamson added.
The police Contact, Command and Control Division (C3 Division) has been transformed into an "efficient, tightly-controlled and sophisticated complex of service centres” since the incident in 2015.
Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs said: "Lamara Bell and John Yuill's deaths were a tragedy and my first thoughts today are with their family and friends.
"Police Scotland failed Lamara and John in 2015 and I repeat the personal apology made previously to their loved ones. We did not keep them safe in their time of need as was our duty and for that I am truly sorry.”
