A father and son who found the car involved in a fatal crash in Cardiff have said the police should have started looking for the missing passengers sooner.
Two women and a man were killed in the car crash after a night out on Friday, and two others they were travelling with remain in critical condition at the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff.
Matthew Pace, 45, and his son Lewis, 26, told Sky News that they found the car in a wooded area along the A48 just after midnight on Sunday morning.
“The minute they were reported missing, surely they should have been looking, searching,” Matthew said.
“Especially when witnesses saw five people in the car and there’s no contact off any of them, I thought they’d have been looking all day Saturday.”
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) says it is “urgently carrying out an assessment” after it received referrals from Gwent Police and South Wales Police on Monday regarding the incident.
‘We found them before police’: Officers criticised over search
Matthew said that police arrived “about a minute” after he and Lewis had pulled up by the side of the road after noticing “tyre marks” near the wooded area.
“I pulled up, I was in the field, in the woods and then she [a police officer] pulled up behind me,” he said.
“She was asking why I was there, and I said: ‘There’s all tyre marks here’ and then her colleague came out, looked at the tyre marks and they got the helicopter to search in this bush and that’s when it was confirmed it was there.”
Lewis added: “As soon as they were reported missing, [police] should have been out there looking for them, at the end of the day they were missing so there should have been a search there and then.”
‘We were best mates’
Darcy Ross, 21, Eve Smith, 21, Rafel Jeanne, 24, Shane Loughlin, 32, Sophie Russon, 20, had all been reported missing after a night out on Friday, having travelled to Cardiff from the town of Porthcawl in a Vaulkswagen Tiguan.
Ms Ross, Ms Smith and Mr Jeanne were reported dead at the scene, police said, and Mr Loughlin and Ms Russon are in critical condition.
Lewis said he and Mr Jeanne were “best mates”.
“I’m devastated. I can’t cope, I can’t eat. It’s just devastating,” he said.
“When I saw them skid marks, obviously I was praying that it was nothing to do with it and it turns out it was, but the police were searching literally next to where we found it and anyway the helicopter was in the sky, so I don’t know how it wasn’t found quicker.”
‘Very good kid’
Lewis added that he last spoke to Mr Jeanne on Thursday night.
“Obviously I didn’t think anything of it until I saw he was reported missing, I saw comments on Facebook that the police were not taking it seriously, obviously they deffo should have been.”
The two have been friends “for years through football”, Lewis said, adding that Mr Jeanne was a “very good kid”.
“We were very very close, we did most things together.
“He’s just hilarious, honestly best way to describe him is just funny, like he’s always up for a laugh…I just miss him already.”
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Speaking of the moment when Lewis and his father discovered the car, he said: “I was just praying it wasn’t, of course, I was just praying it wasn’t them.”
