Two children orphaned as accident blackspot claims lives

Published on Friday 27 November 2009 21:39

TWO children aged two and six have been orphaned following a three-car crash on the A9 in which their mother died.

Eleanor Campbell, 39, from Lochinver in Sutherland, died in hospital following the collision near Dalwhinnie in Inverness-shire on Wednesday evening.

Her children, Iain, six, and Isabella, two, who were travelling with her, were also hurt but their injuries are not life-threatening.

Douglas Keith, 64, a company director from Inverness, also died at the scene and another man, who has not been named, was injured.

Mrs Campbell's husband Mark died after a sudden asthma attack in 2007 aged 41 and the couple lost a baby before their two children were born. Mrs Campbell's mother also died from a brain tumour at a young age.

The accident happened shortly after 7pm on a single carriageway stretch of the Perth-Inverness road at Crubenmore.

The stretch is known as an accident blackspot and road campaigners have made repeated calls for the route to be dualled.

Mrs Campbell was brought up in Lochinver where her father, Ian Yates, ran a local firm, Sutherland Gemcutters.

After living in Edinburgh for a time, where she met her husband, the couple returned to the Assynt area in 1998. She took over the running of the family firm and he opened an outdoor shop, Assynt Adventures.

He was deputy leader of Assynt Mountain Rescue Team and was also a keen caver, climber, mountaineer and canoeist. He died in July 2007 while his wife was pregnant with their daughter.

Last night Robin Noble, chairman of Assynt Community Council, said: "This is the latest in a series of tragedies to hit this family. They have just had one thing after another to cope with.

"It is horrendous and we are all stunned by the scale of it. The whole community is shocked and everyone you talk to is just numbed by it.

"Everyone liked Eleanor very much and admired her for the fact she seemed to get everything back on track after all the tragedy that had afflicted her. To now hear of her death is just unbelievable."

Mr Keith, a father of one, was managing director of Daniels Sweet Herring in Grantown-on-Spey. He leaves a wife, Fiona, and son Jonathan, 14.

Tony Evans, operations manager at Daniels, said: "It is tragic. Everyone here is devastated. I am in a daze.

"Douglas was one of the founders of the company 30 years ago and was respected by everyone at the company."

Crubenmore was the scene of another double-fatal accident in July last year in which Paul Anderson, 48, and his granddaughter, Samantha Jane Carr, four, were killed while travelling to the funeral of Mr Anderson's niece.

The A9 has 80 miles of single carriageway and 24 dual. There were 171 accidents on the road between 1 January 2006 and to 31 December 2008, including 19 fatal and 30 serious crashes.

Of these 39 were on dual carriageway and 132 on single carriageway.

Transport Scotland says the accident rate for the dualled section is 5.6 accidents per 100 million vehicle kilometres (mkv) against the national average of 7.7 per 100mvk and 8.2 accidents per 100 mkv on the single carriageway (17.8 accidents per 100mvk average.)