{"id":323564,"date":"2025-08-06T21:55:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323564\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T21:55:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T21:55:12","slug":"ukrainian-refugee-hit-by-car-while-on-phone-inquest-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323564\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian refugee hit by car while on phone, inquest hears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The driver of the vehicle, Tata steelworker Jamie Hitchings, was returning home after working a 6am to 6pm shift at the steelworks, the inquest heard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Hitchings said he had not seen Ms Martynova, who was dressed all in black and crossing in an &#8220;uncommon part of the road&#8221;, until immediately before the collision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he slammed on his brakes before getting out of the car to help Ms Martynova.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mr Hitchings then used some nearby cones to block off the road while attempting to get a response from Ms Martynova. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Giving evidence, PC Karl Painter, a forensic collision investigator for South Wales Police, said only one street light was illuminated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said the surface along the 50mph (80km\/h) road was wet with &#8220;restricted visibility&#8221; due to the amount of rain falling, the darkness of the location, and the topography of the road.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Swansea council also confirmed to the police that street lighting was switched off at the time, as part of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-wales-14915485\" class=\"ssrcss-f6h2dj-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">national energy reduction measures<\/a>, which involved the switching off of lights after a risk assessment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">South Wales Police reviewed the circumstances and decided to take no further action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The driver of the vehicle, Tata steelworker Jamie Hitchings, was returning home after working a 6am to 6pm&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-323564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114984054241003285","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}