AN ambulance driver who caused the death of two men on the A49 in Herefordshire said he was distracted by the flashback face of a dead baby, an inquest heard.

Jason Allen and Andrew Ralph both died at the scene at Pengethley, near Ross-on-Wye, after a 1930 Ford Model A coupe vintage car they were travelling in was involved in a crash with an ambulance driven by Kevin Lilwall on August 25, 2019.

Mr Allan was aged 49 and was from Ross. Mr Ralph was 61 and from Malvern.

Today (June 28), an inquest was held into the deaths of the two friends who were on their way to Onslow Park Steam Rally, near Shrewsbury.

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Mr Lilwall and his colleague, Craig Morgan, meanwhile, were returning to the ambulance’s hub in Ross to finish a 12-hour shift.

Two days before the crash the pair had witnessed a paediatric cardiac arrest of a five-month-old baby that also happened in Pengthley, the inquest was told.

“There were reports that a child was not breathing and a member of the family was trying to do CPR,” said Mr Lilwall, who was driving.

“The mother was downstairs. She was hysterical.”

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Mr Lilwall continued with resuscitation as well as administering drugs, which carried on as the ambulance crew went to Hereford County Hospital. But the baby sadly died.

“I was pretty gutted. How it happened was pretty emotive,” said Mr Liwall.

Because of the incident, the he ended up working a 14-hour shift, finishing at 8.30am on August 24.

“I woke up at midday having a nightmare of seeing the child,” said Mr Lilwall.

“I went back to sleep, got up to have toast and went to work.”

Mr Lilwall and Mr Morgan started their shift at 6.30pm and were due to finish at 6.30am the following day. But at 6.18am, the ambulance crashed with Mr Allen’s car after it veered across the carriageway and into its path.

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“I can remember we going up Pengethley. I just had this weird feeling of coldness,” said Mr Lilwall.

“I went really cold. It was really terrible, it was like a fear.

“As we went around the corner, this face appeared – the face that appeared in the nightmare.

“It just got bigger. It was just a face with blue lips. It was awful.

“The next thing, there was a bang and a collision.

“Until this day, I still cannot remember what happened after that. I never experienced anything like it.

It was just awful, absolutely awful.”

PC Howard Latham, a collision investigator, told the inquest that the ambulance was driving at around 35 to 40mph, the weather was dry and no road defects were found that could have caused the crash.

He said CCTV footage from the ambulance showed no evidence of poor driving by Mr Lilwall before the crash.

A joint sleep expert report concluded that post-traumatic stress disorder was more likely the cause of the crash rather than “a micro-dream”.

Roland Wooderson, deputy coroner for Herefordshire, recorded that Mr Allen and Mr Ralph died as a result of their injuries in a road traffic collision.