The sister of an NHS worker who was killed by a falling branch from a rotten tree was on FaceTime with her when the freak accident happened, an inquest heard Wednesday.
Shannon Owen, 22, was killed by an 18ft branch in Hartslock wood near Whitchurch on Thames, South Oxfordshire on March 11 this year.
She had been enjoying a walk in the woods with her best friend Sinead, Sinead’s teenage brother Harrison and her pet dog when the incident happened.
Shannon was video chatting on her mobile phone to her sister Georgia at the exact moment the branch suddenly crashed to the ground, hitting Shannon in the chest and calling fatal injuries.
Georgia saw the phone knocked out of her sister’s hand and heard Sinead screaming in the background while Harrison picked up Shannon’s phone and told her that she needed to call an ambulance.
Oxfordshire senior coroner, Darren Salter, recorded an accidental death verdict, saying that people would refer to Shannon’s death as a ‘freak accident.’
The inquest was told that Miss Owen had gone on a walk alongside the River Thames with her best friend Sinead and her 19-year-old brother Harrison.
Mr Salter heard that the three of them had walked off the path down a hill into a woodland to use a rope swing tied around a tree.
Sinead had been using the swing for around 20 minutes while Shannon sat opposite her, perched on a tree stump with Harrison in between them.
Shannon’s sister Georgia had then video called her after a letter came through the door marked as private and confidential.
In a statement read out at Oxford Coroners’ Court, Sinead wrote: ‘Shannon was not just my older sister but she was also my best friend. At around 3.30pm I noticed that a letter had been posted through the door for Shannon saying it was private and confidential.
‘I Facetimed her at 3.41pm and whilst speaking to her on the phone she was struck by the tree. It all happened so quickly. All I saw was her phone rolling down the hill, I was so, so confused.’
In the minutes that followed Georgia made desperate attempts to find her sister’s location on Snapchat maps and scramble to the scene.
Meanwhile, Harrison was doing CPR on Shannon, who was laying motionless in the muddy woods.
Mr Salter heard that a huge bough, around a metre in diameter and from the tree next to the one with the rope swing, had snapped off and hit Shannon, who lived in High Street, Theale, Berkshire.
Firefighters using boats, paramedics, police officers and air ambulance crews all arrived in 40 minutes to try to save Shannon’s life but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigations showed that the tree trunk was probably rotten and had hit Shannon when it was 20 metres long but split in half and rolled down the hill towards the river.
A Detective constable called to the scene, told the coroner: ‘We had difficulty accessing the area as it was a steep embankment.
‘When I got there it was raining heavily and was muddy and it was no longer possible to walk to the area without falling over so the fire and rescue service had to tie ropes between the trees so emergency crews could abseil down the hill instead.’
He said he spoke to the owner of the woodland, an elderly man aged in his 80s and told him what had happened.
Lisa Owen, Shannon’s mother, made it clear at the inquest that she wanted a fence put around the woodland to stop a freak accident happening again.
She said: ‘To prevent anyone else going through this heartache and suffering, I really do believe that there should be fencing around the woodland.’
