Graham Saville inquest: Sergeant's train death could have been prevented
The death of a police sergeant struck by a train could have been prevented if the control room had not delayed contacting Network Rail, a coroner has said.Married father of two Graham Saville had been trying to help a vulnerable man when he was hit by the high-speed train, and died in hospital five days later.His inquest heard he and two colleagues approached the railway line in Nottinghamshire after the control room falsely said it was contacting Network Rail.Coroner Laurinda Bower said if Network Rail had been contacted sooner, it could have put a "caution" on the line - meaning trains would have slowed down and the collision would not have occurred.
Sgt Saville was struck at 19:08 BST on 24 August 2023 - only 20 seconds after the call to Network Rail was eventually made.Sgt Saville's family said the inquest had "unfortunately revealed some shocking and disturbing information"."The inquest has identified deficiencies in so many areas, which, had they been in place and followed, could have prevented this tragedy occurring," they said in a statement.However, they said the inquest had also shown them that Sgt Saville and his colleagues were "focused on protecting and serving", and it was "important to shine a light on this aspect"."Many hundreds of officers across the country fulfil this duty day in and day out and this is never acknowledged," the statement added.
The inquest heard Sgt Saville, a response officer, had been deployed following a 999 call about a man referred to at the inquest as Patient C.Patient C had a history of suicide attempts, the inquest was told, and had called the ambulance service at 18:47 saying he had left his house, was heading towards the railway line in Balderton, and intended to walk in front of a train because he was "not able to do this any more".The inquest heard the correct procedure should have been for the police control room to contact Network Rail before Patient C even reached the railway line.However, this did not happen.When the coroner asked dispatcher Jack Richardson why there was a delay, he said he thought Network Rail did not need to be contacted unless someone had entered a railway.The inquest also heard the control room called Network Rail on an incorrect number, which was an emergency line for the public, rather than the one police were meant to use.
Sgt Saville was at the side of the railway line when he was struck by the train, which was travelling at about 125mph.He had discharged his Taser in the direction of Patient C, and the coroner said this would have meant he needed to position himself closer, as the optimal firing distance was between two and four metres."He was starting to move away from the line when he was struck," she said.He was given first aid by his colleagues and taken to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham.However, he died in hospital on 29 August, with his cause of death given as multiple injuries.
'Wholly preventable'
In her findings, the coroner said the delay in contacting Network Rail "probably more than minimally contributed to Graham's death".She also said the collision "would not have occurred if a caution had been placed on the line".Ms Bower said there had been a further delay by a senior officer telling Sgt Saville and his two colleagues not to enter the line, and this had "probably more than minimally contributed" to his death.The coroner gave a narrative conclusion, which summarised how Sgt Saville had died, and said his death had been "wholly preventable".His widow, Joanne Saville, then thanked the coroner for what she said had been a "full and fearless" inquest, while saying it had been "painful to hear"."We have the full facts and the answers to our questions and this is important not only now, but for the future, if, when or should our children wish to know everything," she said.
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If you ever thought, as I did growing up there, that Northern Ireland's fame was limited to 30 years of bombs and bullets, or building a ship that sank on its maiden voyage — you'd better think again. Twenty-one years ago, we were also host to the biggest robbery in British or Irish history at the time — in fact, the sixth biggest robbery in the world. Pretty impressive, eh? In one sense, it was impressive. On December 20, 2004, £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the Northern Bank headquarters in Belfast's city centre — in clear view of the public as Christmas shoppers strolled round the continental market just feet away. Glenn Patterson, an admired Belfast-based novelist, has written a book showing how the robbers did it, and how they got away with it. It was not just a monetary robbery, but a symbolic one. The Northern Bank building is a landmark in Belfast's post-industrial city centre, a great, sturdy 1970s edifice in concrete. It's a building you can imagine Bill Bixby walking out of, coat over shoulder, in the credits for The Incredible Hulk. But the robbery was not the first of its kind that year. Already in 2004 there had been other 'tiger kidnappings', where robbers would take family members hostage and force bank employees to help them to carry out the heist. In response, the Northern Bank had changed its operations so that two key holders were needed simultaneously to access its cash vaults. The criminals' solution? To abduct two employees' family members at once. Kevin McMullan, the bank's assistant manager, and Chris Ward, a junior employee, both had a knock on the door the night before the robbery. Armed men took over their homes and held their families hostage while McMullan and Ward were taken away. The men were held overnight, then told to go to work the next day and act normally. At clocking-off time they were to use their access to remove cash from the vault, disguised in containers to look like rubbish, and load it into a waiting white van. And so they did: great blocks and boxes of new and used notes, kilos upon kilos of it. The cover of Patterson's book shows a CCTV image of Ward leaving the bank's side entrance with a holdall over one shoulder. The holdall contains £1.2 million. Little wonder he's leaning to one side to counter the weight. So who did it? There's no doubt: the only criminal outfit in Northern Ireland with the organisational capability to plan and execute the robbery so methodically was the IRA. (The single sign of amateurishness was that two men in the van wore Russ Abbot-style ginger 'Jimmy' wigs beneath their baseball caps. This odd sight alerted passersby and almost foiled the robbery.) Opinions are divided on why the IRA carried out the robbery. For a pension fund? Investment abroad? • The 21 best history books of the past year to read next The whole story is presented beautifully by Patterson, who adopts the right tone for each phase of the tale. The abduction scenes have the horrible tension of a thriller, and reminded me of Brian Moore's great Troubles novel Lies of Silence. Elsewhere, Patterson adopts a tone of amused incredulity at the shocking details of the robbery and its aftermath. 'You have to take your hat off to this country. It has a way of exceeding your worst, most lavish expectations.' But the robbery also presented a political problem for the British and Irish governments. In 2004, the fledgling Northern Ireland Assembly had collapsed, and there were 'talks about talks' to get it up and running again. Indeed, when MI5 detected high levels of phone activity between senior IRA men the night before the robbery, they optimistically — naively — thought it meant an announcement was imminent on the decommissioning of IRA weapons, to break the political deadlock. When it was announced who the likely culprits were, Sinn Fein — the IRA's political wing — complained of a smear on republicans. But as Patterson points out, in one of the few passages where he sounds truly angry, this was a common tactic for Sinn Fein. He reminds us about the brutal murder of Robert McCartney after an argument in a Belfast bar in January 2005, when nobody in the pub — including the future Stormont minister Deirdre Hargey of Sinn Fein — would speak to the police about what happened. Instead, Hargey claimed that reports of IRA involvement in the murder were 'part of the onslaught by the media and governments and political parties to criminalise Sinn Fein and the republican movement'. As Patterson coolly observes: 'There is chutzpah, and there is chutzpah.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Hardly any of the money has been recovered, and only one person was prosecuted for the robbery. That person was … one of the victims, Chris Ward, who was prosecuted on circumstantial evidence that the robbery had been an inside job — the IRA men were so well prepared that someone in the bank must have helped them. The case was abandoned partway through. Patterson attended every day of the trial. The case was clearly not an outstanding example of prosecutorial craft. Phil Flynn, who was vice president of Sinn Fein, took the view that 'there was nobody killed. At the end of the day, it was only money.' But it wasn't only money. The robbery revealed a lot about what was important in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein was welcomed back into government. And in a world where every conspiracy theorist sees two-tier justice in any outcome they don't like, the aftermath of the robbery provided a real example. The senior IRA man Bobby Storey — believed to be the brains behind the robbery, and 'a great human being' in the words of Gerry Adams — died in June 2020 and his funeral attracted more than 1,500 people, in contravention of Covid regulations. Other people could have no more than 30 at theirs. None of the Sinn Fein politicians who attended were prosecuted, while at a Black Lives Matter protest in Belfast a few weeks earlier, 70 people were fined. Patterson had once planned to write a screenplay of the robbery. I wish he had. It has everything: tension, dark comedy, human interest, big issues and more. But this book will do very nicely in its place. And if the Northern Bank heist was indeed a symbolic robbery, then here is the other symbol. Why did they do it? Because they knew they could get away with it. As Patterson points out: 'Something [else] disappeared in that white van in December 2004 that has never been recovered.' The Northern Bank Job: The Heist and How They Got Away With It by Glenn Patterson (Head of Zeus £16.99 pp272). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
