M5 Crash Victims: Lorry Driver Kye Thomas Was 'Flourishing Father' To Blind Son

M5 Crash Victims: Lorry Driver Kye Thomas Was 'Flourishing Father' To Blind Son

A lorry driver killed in the horrific M5 crash has a blind son.

Kye Thomas, 38, had only moved to a new home in Gunnislake, south east Cornwall, with Becki, his wife of 12 years, and their four children the day before the crash last Friday night, Mrs Thomas told the Plymouth Herald.

She spoke of a man "flourishing" as a father, devoted to their daughters Jordan, 12, and Trinity-Rose, 16 months, and sons Kane, 11, and Connor, nine, who is blind.

"It was Saturday night when it really hit me," she told the paper. "I went into shock. I think that was when I said 'goodbye' to him. It is hard trying to carry on with the kids."

She said Kane went back to school on Monday because he "wanted to go ahead and make it easier for when Connor goes back".

"He said to me 'I am the man of the house now, I have to step up'," she told the newspaper.

Mr Thomas died along with fellow Samworth Brothers driver Terry Brice, father and daughter Michael and Maggie Barton, grandparents Anthony and Pamela Adams and battle re-enactor Malcolm Beacham in the multi-vehicle pile-up on the motorway in Somerset.

Police are focusing their attention on the theory that the crash was caused by smoke drifting on to the M5 from a fireworks event at nearby Taunton Rugby Club.

A total of 51 people were injured in the accident - described as one of the worst British motorway crashes in memory - and 11 remain in hospital.

Mr Thomas, a third dan in taekwondo and former lance corporal in the King's Royal Hussars, was working as an agency driver on a night shift taking a delivery to Bristol for Samworth Brothers, owner of Ginsters, which has its factory just a few miles from the family home in Callington. Mrs Thomas worked for Ginsters, as did her mother. Her father is also a lorry driver.

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