RESIDENTS are calling for a fatal accident inquiry after a woman was killed when a coal lorry ploughed into her living room in North Ayrshire.
Catherine Bonner, 55, was crushed beneath the rubble and debris of her ground-floor flat after the lorry left the road and smashed into the front of the building in Main Street, Fairlie last Thursday afternoon.
Emergency crews tried to rescue Ms Bonner, a carer and ex-Glasgow Housing Association employee who had moved to the village from Glasgow with partner James McColl last year, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.
Mr McColl, 55, who was also in the property at the time of the crash, was discharged from hospital on Friday after suffering minor injuries. The driver of the lorry, 54, has also been treated for minor injuries.
Police are continuing to carry out investigations into the cause.
However, local residents are calling for a full-scale fatal accident inquiry to be launched amid claims that plans for a bypass should never have been scrapped.
Fairlie Community Council chairman Steve Graham warned last week that the A78, the trunk road running through Fairlie, was a "killer road" and the community council had raised concerns for years about heavy freight lorries and other traffic cutting through the quiet village.
David Telford, secretary of the community council, said: "The major fight that our village now has on its hands is to try to ensure that a fatal accident inquiry is held."
Plans for a bypass to re-route traffic out of Fairlie were dropped in 2003 following the recommendations of a local public inquiry, pre-dating the creation of Transport Scotland.
A North Ayrshire Council spokesman said: "We will meet with Transport Scotland as soon as the investigations into this tragic accident are concluded and will discuss with them how best to prevent a similar incident happening again in the future."
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