"Astonishing" escape for boy, seven, as van crashes into lorry

A seven-year-old boy had an "astonishing" escape after a van crashed into the back of a flatbed lorry, caving in the front-end right where he was sitting.

Paramedics from West Midlands Ambulance Service said the possibility of multiple fatalities had been "enormous".

The boy was trapped in the wreck for 45 minutes but was freed by medics and firefighters, before being taken to hospital with a badly broken left leg.

An ambulance service spokesman said:

The crash happened on the A46 at Coventry in the West Midlands on Saturday night.

When medics got to the scene, they found a white van had struck the back of a parked flatbed recovery truck, which had stopped to pick up a car.

The lorry's driver had been at the rear of his truck just moments before the crash.

The 50-year-old driver of the van, which was towing a trailer at the time, managed to free himself from the wreck and suffered only minor head and leg injuries.

Medics checked the recovery driver, who was left badly shaken but otherwise unhurt.