A couple who narrowly survived a rollercoaster crash at Alton Towers have announced their engagement almost seven years after they both sustained life-changing injuries on their first date.
Leah Washington, 24, who had her left leg amputated above the knee, and Joe Pugh, also 24, who was treated for two broken knees and extensive hand injuries, confirmed their engagement yesterday on social media.
Washington, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, was on her first date with Pugh, on June 2, 2015, when their carriage on a ride called The Smiler smashed into an empty test carriage. Sixteen people were injured in the crash.
Images shared on social media show Pugh standing behind a beaming Washington as she showed off her diamond engagement ring during a trip to Venice on Sunday.
Washington wrote: “So this happened yesterday … I said yes.” Her Instagram clip has been liked almost 7,000 times. Pugh also shared the couple’s joy on Instagram. He wrote: “What a great end to a long weekend in Venice … She said yes”.
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The owner of Alton Towers was fined £5 million in September 2016 for “catastrophic” safety failures that led to the crash. The judge imposed the fine after finding that Merlin Entertainments, one of Europe’s biggest ride operators, was in the higher bracket of culpability.
Washington, along with Vicky Balch, then aged 20, had been in the front row of the train which smashed into a stationary test carriage on a far loop known as the Cobra Roll. The impact was the equivalent of a family saloon car crashing at 90mph. They each lost a leg in the collision and later sued Merlin for negligence.
The victims, who were in excruciating pain, were left dangling 20ft above the ground and at a 45-degree angle. Their anguish was compounded by those on the ground failing to understand the seriousness of the situation and by a delay in the arrival of medical help because of the inaccessibility of the site.
On the day of the accident, a test carriage was sent down the track but it had failed to complete the course, coming to rest midway around the 14-loop ride. Engineers, who distrusted the control panel, manually overrode the ride’s automatic fail-safe system, known as a “block stop”, before instituting the restart procedure which sent the loaded train down the track.
Merlin Entertainments pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 at a hearing in April 2016.
