Van driver relives the moment he ran over a drunk man lying in Tilehurst Road

Paul Terry had been driving a company van to pick up two colleagues for a trip to Barrow, in Cumbria, when he ran over the body of Allan Woodcock lying in Tilehurst Road at around 3.30am on Monday, January 13.

Giving evidence at an inquest at Reading Civic Centre on Tuesday the 34-year-old broke down into tears when cross-examined by the counsel for Mr Woodcock’s family, Paul Clark,

Mr Terry said: “He was lying in the road and I came around the bend. I didn’t see him.

“I hit my brakes. It seemed to take forever to stop.

“I was in a state of panic. It felt a hell of a lot different, he was underneath the van.”

Mr Woodcock, 31 of Wittenham Avenue in Tilehurst, had spent Sunday, January 12, with five friends at the Lakeside World Professional Darts Championship in Frimley before going out drinking in Reading and was more than double the drink-driving limit when he began walking home.

Mr Terry insisted he was driving at around 33mph but could not explain how his van had dragged the body of Mr Woodcock for 90 metres down the eastbound carriageway opposite the junction with Parkside Road after the collision.

After being taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, with “unsurvivable” chest and head injuries Mr Woodcock died two days later at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Berkshire coroner Peter Bedford said that some questions surrounding the death of Mr Woodcock would never be answered, including why it took so long for Mr Terry to stop and why Mr Woodcock was lying in the road.

He said: “This is an incident where, apart from Mr Terry, there are no witnesses so all of us are struggling to make sense of the information.”

But recording a narrative verdict after a gruelling five-and-a-half hour inquest, he said: “My heart goes out to the family who had to listen to this throughout and I do not spare Mr Terry from my thoughts from the ordeal that has taken place today.”