A nine-year-old boy died after a 4×4 vehicle towing a water bowser “slipped” down a steep hill, an inquest heard.

Pontypridd Coroner’s Court heard the family was taking water to calves in one of their fields in Rhondda Cynon Taf when the white Mitsubishi L200 Warrior started to “slip” down the sloped field.

Tomos Rhys Bunford died at the scene of the incident on 6 September 2021, despite resuscitation attempts.

His father, Rhys Bunford, who was driving the vehicle prior to the collision, instructed his family to exit as it was heading towards a “sheer drop” of five metres.

Mr Bunford, who worked for a skip hire firm, told the inquest he farmed “as a hobby”, having grown up on a farm and not wanting his children “to lose what [he] grew up with”.

Mr Bunford, his wife Louise, their sons Tomos and Gethin, and their young baby all exited the vehicle.

“I thought we were all heading over the embankment down into the valley,” he said.

“I thought it would have been a safer position for us all to exit the vehicle than to wait to see what happens down there.”

‘Jumped out’

Louise Bunford told the inquest that Tomos “jumped out and I pushed [him] just to get him out of the truck”.

“I just pushed him as far away from the truck, because I didn’t want him to go under the truck,” she added.

“I jumped out with baby on my chest. At that point [the water bowser] had started already jack-knifing.”

Mrs Bunford said the truck hit her and she was “under the wheels”.

It was a route they had taken “every week” as a family with no previous concerns, Mrs Bunford added.

A Health and Safety Executive report found the vehicle was overall “structurally in a reasonable condition” but noted that “trailer brakes were in poor condition”.

Assistant coroner Gavin Knox agreed with the provisional cause of death of “blunt force injury to the chest and abdomen”.

In his conclusion, he said Mr Bunford “lost control in fear of his family falling off the steep drop-off at the bottom of the hill”.

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He said the loss of control was due to a combination of factors, including the “steepness of the slope in the field” and “mismatched and unsuitable tyres”.

“Tomos was struck by the vehicle he was travelling in, after the water bowser had jack-knifed,” Mr Knox added.

The assistant coroner concluded that Tomos’s death was accidental.

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