Dad's agony over which twins' life to save
I feel so sorry for him, he is a good presenter on Yorkshire Tv. What a dilema to be put in.
Dad's agony over which twins' life to save
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Devastated: Father Ian Clayton
A TV presenter has told of the agonising moment when he was forced to choose between either saving his daughter or his son from raging river rapids after their canoe had capsized.
Ian Clayton held back tears as he told the inquest of the tragic events that led to the death of his nine-year-old daughter, Billie Holiday, during an outing on the River Wye in Mid Wales in April 2006.
Mr Clayton and his son Edward were treated for hypothermia after escaping from the fast-flowing currents at Glasbury.
Despite desperate attempts to find Billie, first of all by Mr Clayton and then by two policemen alerted to the incident, she was not discovered until it was too late.
She was airlifted to Hereford Hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Mr Clayton, a 48-year-old ITV Yorkshire presenter from Featherstone, said the canoe overturned after he took a wrong turn in the river while they tried to make their way downstream in Hay-on-Wye while Heather Parkinson, his partner and mother to Billie and Edward, was waiting.
Mr Clayton said his son Edward was left clinging desperately on to the branches of a felled tree lying in the river while there was no sign of his daughter who he suspected of being under the overturned canoe stuck 20 yards upstream.
He told the inquest in Welshpool, mid-Wales: "At times I dream I went the wrong way. It is something that has been in my mind for two years and two months.
Did I make the right decision? I don't know and I suppose I will never know - Clayton
"Did I make the right decision? I don't know and I suppose I will never know.
"Should I go for the one I can see and hope that later I can find the one I can't see?
"In the end I went for the one I could see. It wasn't without difficulty getting him out." He added: "When I eventually got to Edward in the river that day, the first thing he said to me was: 'Save my sister first'.
"It is hard to imagine what must have been going through that little lad's mind for him to say that."
Mr Clayton said his family had spent the morning looking around the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye whilst on holiday on April 12.
The river trip was booked later that morning after he noticed his children were becoming a little bored. As Miss Parkinson was scared of water Mr Clayton said he and his children had arranged to meet her back in the town when they finished.
After being taken to a riverbank 10 minutes' drive away, Mr Clayton said a man called Wayne from the canoeing company told him to "follow his nose", keep out of the shallows and they would eventually find themselves back in Hay-on-Wye in three hours' time.
The inquest said Mr Clayton got into difficulty just over an hour into the trip after he realised he had taken a wrong turn and tried to make his way back upstream when he encountered a fast current.
"I could hear the water was fast, bearing in mind we'd been on a very placid part of the river and I wondered whether it was too fast for me and should I stop to reassess what we were doing," said Mr Clayton.
"Suddenly we were taken and I couldn't steer the canoe because it was forceful on the bend.
"In the blink of an eye we hit something which I thought was a fallen tree and the canoe tipped over."
Before describing the events of the fateful day Mr Clayton held up a school photo taken of his daughter and paid her an emotional tribute.
"We've been talking a lot about technical areas and I want people to remember who we are talking about," said Mr Clayton.
"This is Billie when she was eight and it is her last school photograph.
"Most people who look at it say, 'what a beautiful girl'.
"She was a delight - an absolute delight.
Heather and me waited 18 years before we had children.
Earlier in the proceedings Marcus Bailie, the head of inspection for the Adventure Activities Licensing Service, said activities such as canoeing are only licensable if they involve leadership or guidance from the operator.
He said another principal exemption for licensing such activities was if a participating child was accompanied by their parent or legal guardian.
Mr Bailie said that of the 250,000 people that use the River Wye every year, only about 10% would be under licensed conditions.
Howard Jeffs from the British Canoeing Union said checks carried out on the equipment used following Billie's death failed to identify any faults.
source: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article....&in_page_id=34
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