Faye Dawson was killed by a 79-year-old man who deliberately swerved into oncoming traffic on the motorway.
HOW IT HAPPENED
Driver Terence Unsworth made an ‘unfathomable’ U-turn and began driving in the wrong direction on the M6 on November 19, 2022.
He then crashed head-on with Faye’s mother’s Vauxhall Meriva, killing the three-year-old who was sitting in the back seat. Mr Unsworth died at the scene.
MOTHER’S PAIN
At an inquest in Preston, mother Beth Dawson said: ‘My poor babe should have had her whole life ahead of her.
‘To have her life so cruelly snatched away in a moment is something I will never get over. No child should leave this world before their parent.
‘No words will ever come close to the pain.
‘Neither this inquest nor the earlier inquest into the death of the other party, nor the investigation by the police has been able to establish exactly why the other person decided to drove his car the wrong way down the motorway.
‘His actions were inexplicable. It eats away at me and makes it impossible to achieve any kind of justice, closure and the space to grieve.’
WHAT INVESTIGATION REVEALS
Investigating officer PC Rachel Carbery said: ‘He has entered the slip road correctly then when he got to the give way lines he has stopped, indicated and done a U-turn. It was a clear and obvious turn in the wrong direction.
‘There were two vehicles in front of Miss Dawson, around 900 metres prior to the collision, they moved out of that lane but I don’t have any evidence to say when that occurred [as they were obscured by a HGV). It was completely impossible for Miss Dawson to avoid that collision.’
However, the investigation was unable to explain why Mr Unsworth decided to drive the wrong way down the motorway.
