Shannon Owen watched her pal play on a tree swing when the department hit her (Image: Hyde Information)
The sister of a younger NHS employee watched in horror as her sibling was crushed to dying by a tree department whereas they spoke over FaceTime.
Shannon Owen, 22, had been out strolling within the woods of south Oxfordshire along with her finest pal, her pal’s brother and her pet canine on March 11.
As she was chatting on the telephone along with her sister, Georgia, an 18ft department out of the blue crashed on high of her, hitting her chest and severely injuring her.
Georgia watched as her telephone display screen confirmed a blur as Shannon’s telephone flew by way of the air, Oxfordshire senior coroner, Darren Salter, heard.
Salter recorded an unintentional dying verdict, saying that Shannon died from a ‘freak accident’ close to Whitchurch-on-Thames, a village on the Oxfordshire financial institution of the River Thames,
The tragedy occurred after Shannon and her finest pal Sinead and brother Harrison, 19, went for a stroll alongside the Thames that afternoon.
Strolling off the overwhelmed path down a hill, the group hoped to have enjoyable on a rope swing connected to a tree that Sinead used for some 20 minutes.
Shanon watched her pal from a tree stump simply reverse when Georgia phoned her a few non-public and confidential letter posted by way of the door.
‘I FaceTimed her at 3.41pm and while talking to her on the telephone she was caught by the tree,’ Georgia stated in an announcement learn to the inquest.
The NHS administrator died of a ‘freak accident’, the coroner stated (Image: NP Image Desk/Hyde Information & Footage Ltd)
‘All of it occurred so shortly. All I noticed was her telephone rolling down the hill, I used to be so, so confused.’
All Georgia might hear have been Sinead’s screams earlier than Harrison grabbed the telephone and pleaded for her to telephone an ambulance.
Georgia scrambled to pin precisely the place the group was within the woods, counting on Snapchat maps to inform emergency companies the place to go.
Saltear heard how an enormous rotting bough department had snapped off the tree reverse the one with the rope swing, later rolling down the hill towards the river.
Emergency companies arrived about 40 minutes later however Shannon died on the scene.
A detective constable instructed the coroner that police, paramedics and firefighters had ‘issue’ attending to Shannon as she was on an embankment.
‘After I acquired there it was raining closely and was muddy and it was now not potential to stroll to the realm with out falling over so the fireplace and rescue service needed to tie ropes between the timber so emergency crews might abseil down the hill as an alternative,’ he stated.
Shannon’s mom, Lisa Owen, referred to as on the landowner ‘to stop anybody else going by way of this heartache and struggling, I actually do imagine that there needs to be fencing across the woodland’.
Nonetheless, in an announcement to the coroner, the proprietor stated: ‘It isn’t sensible or fascinating to place in a fence across the woodland.
‘It’s costly and can be undermined anyway so can be pointless. I’ve bought 24 non-public woodland indicators saying “preserve out” and “don’t enter” which have been positioned at 100m intervals both facet of the footpath.’
The rotting tree was chopped down final month, some 5 months after Shannon’s passing.
‘The lack of Shannon in these circumstances is gloomy and virtually unbelievable,’ the coroner stated.
‘A big tree trunk fell simply at a time the place somebody is beneath it. Some individuals could seek advice from this as a freak accident.
‘There isn’t any third-party involvement and there have been no suspicious circumstances.
‘That is simply so, so unlucky that Shannon was there when this occurred. The coroner’s conclusion needs to be one among accident.’
‘Shannon was not simply my older sister,’ Sinead added, ‘however she was additionally my finest pal.’
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