Four die, one critically hurt in road smashes

Three of the victims died in a four-car pile-up near the scene of an all-night dance rave attended by 25,000 revellers.

One of the cars involved somersaulted four times, flew over a hedge and landed upside down in a field.

Incredibly, all four passengers escaped with minor injuries.

But two men and a woman in another car were killed and had to be cut free from the wreckage by firefighters. The fourth person to die was a motorcyclist whose machine and a car collided on the B480 Stadhampton to Watlington road on Saturday night.

The dead have not yet been named.

The three people killed in yesterday'sthe multiple smash yesterday near the Baynard's Green roundabout on the A43 Oxford-Northampton road, came from the Swindon area.

The crash, near the Baynard's Green roundabout on the A43 Oxford to Northampton road, involved a Ford Ka, a Toyota Landcruiser, a Peugeot and a Volkswagen Polo.

The three who died were in the Polo. A fourth person in the car was taken to the Horton Hospital, Banbury, and later transferred to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, with serious injuries. The occupants of the Landcruiser, Katherine Moss, 54, and her husband, Simon, 51, from Brackley, Northants, were treated at the Horton Hospital.

Police named those in the Ford Ka, which somersaulted and landed in a field, as driver Charlotte Francombe, 19, Gary Boardman, 20, Adam Siouty, 18, and Lorraine Bailey, 19, all from the Southampton area.

The road was closed for four hours while accident investigators examined the wreckage.

Some of the casualties were thought to have been at the all-night rave at Turweston airfield.

A fleet of six ambulances sped to the scene, and a helicopter ferried one of the passengers from the Volkswagen to the John Radcliffe Hospital, but he was dead on arrival.

Five people were hurt, two seriously, when two cars crashed and rolled down a steep embankment between the Wendlebury and Ardley junctions of the M40 on Saturday.