Delivery driver killed by train while making 999 call after crash
John Fletcher, 47, was making a delivery to a farm in Nocton, Lincs, when his van crashed through a brick wall, landing upside down on the tracks, 20 feet below, where he was hit by a locomotive. A jury sitting at Lincoln Crown Court returned a verdict of accidental death yesterday at the end of a four-day inquest into the death, which Mr Fletcher's wife Sally described as a "tragic accident." Mr Fletcher, a father-of-three, was making a delivery at around 6.20pm on February 28 last year exactly a year after the Selby rail disaster when the accident happened. The devoted family man had spoken to his wife only half-an-hour before when he took a wrong turning on a country lane and slammed into the wall at the side of an old railway bridge.
The road was covered in moss and was wet and slippery and a sign to say No Through Road was "considerably faded" and hidden in a hedge, Coroner Roger Atkinson told the court.
