Ben and Rachael brave 300ft drop to reach car plunge victim
A heroic Bridgnorth couple rescued a woman whose car was left teetering on the edge of a Cornish cliff after plunging 200ft towards the sea.
Ben and Rachael Stafford, discovered the injured woman in her car, 300ft down a cliff at St Agnes Head. Lyn Venton, aged 56 had veered off a costal road in heavy mist and had been trapped in her car, bleeding heavily for 20 hours before being found.
The windows of the car had smashed and the roof had caved in as it had flipped down the cliff.
Ben and Rachael who was holidaying in the area, were out jogging with their friend, Lorraine Holland, from Broseley, at 9am on Tuesday when they spotted the car in its precarious position.
Ben said: “At first I thought it was some sort of optical illusion because it didn’t look like the car should have been resting a t he angle it was”.
“I thought it was someone trying to get rid of their car in an insurance job, but we all agreed I should go down just to check there was no-one inside”.
“To my shock and horror when I got down there, I saw what I thought as first was a dead body,. I couldn’t believe it”
After establishing that Mrs Venton was alive and conscious, Ben climbed back up the cliff to raise the alarm.
“Racheal and Lorraine ran off to fetch help, as none of us had our mobile phones with us, and then I climbed back down to wait with her until the coast guards and rescue services arrived” said Ben.
DANGER
“We just chatted about mundane things to keep her calm. If she had started making sudden movements the car might have gone over”.
“I know the place like the back of my hand as I grew up around here and my parents still live about three or four miles away, so I never thought I was in any danger because I’m quite comfortable on that sort of terrain” said Ben, who moved to Bridgnorth five years ago.
“I didn’t try to get her out of the car or touch it in any way, just in case it plunged into the sea” he added.
“It was fate that her car stopped – it shouldn’t have stopped, but it did.
“Maybe it was fate that we were out jogging too”
Ben, a former Bridgnorth Rugby Club player, said the attention he had received since the rescue had been surprising. (Bridgnorth Journal)
