Births, marriages and deaths: May 1, 2025
O'DUFFIN on 26th April 2025 to Greta and Seumas, a son, Ruairidh Allan Tearlach, brother to Struan.
MR M. W. BARRETT AND MISS N. P. PETTMANThe engagement is announced between Michael Wesley Barrett, eldest son of the late Mr and Mrs WH Barrett, and Nichola Phyllis Pettman, elder daughter of the late Mr LO Pettman and
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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Woman looks on in horror as she sees her home EXPLODE from her office window just miles away
A mountain of rubble is all that is left of a family home after a suspected gas explosion. The detached house in Otterton in Devon was completely destroyed by a 'non-suspicious gas explosion' and the fire that followed on Monday morning. Miraculously, no one was inside the property at the time - but the huge bang was witnessed by the homeowner herself from her local business in town, who said she did not realise at the time that it came from her home. Wendy and John Marsh run care homes in the area. Their family home, bought for £360,000 in 2004, was just miles from their businesses when it was destroyed yesterday by the explosion. Locals reported seeing houses 'shaking' and the explosion was heard throughout the village, but thankfully no injuries were reported. One Otterton resident, Adrian Livings, described the explosion to the Sidmouth Herald as the loudest he had ever heard. 'The army carry out manoeuvres close by, so I'm used to hearing explosions but I've never heard anything sound so loud - you could feel it in the middle of your gut. I thought it might have been a plane crash. 'Everybody walked out into the street afterwards and we were all scratching our heads trying to figure out what had happened. 'Within minutes pieces of insulation from the house were landing on the road like snowflakes.' Five crews from Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service attended after the explosion at 11.30am and found the property 'well alight'. The road from Otterton Village to Ladram Bay was closed for most of the day for public safety. One horse rider was nearly thrown off after she witnessed the explosion, DevonLive reported. Dan Lawrence, Wales and West Utilities Gas Emergency Service Manager for Devon, said there were actually no gas mains networks in the area. He told DevonLive: 'We were called to reports of an explosion at a property in the Ladram Road area of Otterton this morning and immediately sent a team of engineers to attend. 'On arrival, we found that there had been severe structural damage to the property and the emergency services were in control of the scene. 'In our role as the gas emergency service, we are supporting the police and the fire brigade as they work to make the area safe and investigate the cause of the explosion. 'However, there is no gas mains network in the area, and so the explosion is not related to natural gas. 'We will continue to support the emergency services who remain in control at the scene.' Police thanked the local community, councillors and staff at Ladram Bay Holiday Park for their help and support while they dealt with the emergency. Parish council chairman Ian Simpson described the situation as 'very, very serious' and said locals were initially panicking. He said: 'It was a substantial blast, people reported that houses down through the village were shaken. 'Apparently, there was insulation flying through the air and landing in people's gardens. 'The emergency services were very concerned if any of that was on fire - we've got loads of thatched cottages in the village, it could have been catastrophic.' Police Inspector Mat Helm said the homeowners run a business locally and the female owner witnessed the explosion from her work window. An Exmouth Police spokesperson said: 'Unfortunately a family lost their home in Otterton. 'The cause appears to be a non-suspicious gas explosion at this time and between that and the subsequent fire, it has completely destroyed the home. 'Ultimately no person nor pet was injured in this instance and that is a massive blessing. However, I would highlight that for the family this is an awful thing so please don't go near the property out of respect for them - and its highly dangerous.'
BBC News
3 days ago
- BBC News
'I must look after mum now': Summer camp for children of Ukraine's missing
The day Russia's full-scale invasion began, Dima's dad told him he might never see him again."The building in our street got blown up. Dad said, 'I'm going to do everything I can so that you can live a normal life.'" Days later, Dima's father had joined the military and left for the front Dima is sharing memories of his dad with 49 other Ukrainian children. Sitting around a campfire, they hold candles to commemorate their missing loved gentle slopes of Ukraine's Carpathian mountains, smothered in brilliant green spruce and fir trees, stretch into the distance. It's a striking backdrop for this heartbreaking scene. We're in the relative safety of western Ukraine, Russian bombs rarely fall here. A little girl talks about when the full-scale invasion began. "The first time we got bombed, my hands were shaking and I was crying," she says. "It took me a long time to cope with that."This campfire activity is a kind of group therapy session. It's part of a pioneering summer camp for a very special group of Ukrainian children, those with a parent who have disappeared during the war. Some are soldiers missing in action on the front line, presumed dead. Some are in captivity or trapped in occupied areas. The Ukrainian government says more than 70,000 people are officially listed as charity that runs the camp, helps thousands of traumatised children across Ukraine and runs several summer camps. But this is the first for this category of children, and the BBC was given exclusive access."Many of these children have multiple traumas because not only are their fathers missing, but some of them have uncles and grandmothers missing too," explains Vanui Martirosyan, lead psychologist at the charity. "They're living like in a frozen state. They cannot plan something in the future because they do not know what the future will bring. And we cannot work with them like with children with actual loss, because they do not have this point of starting grieving."She says many of the children spend hours trawling Russian social media channels, desperately searching for information about their family members. The channels often contain violent content related to the war."They feel fear of crying, they think that if they start crying it will continue for forever. This type of trauma is maybe the most difficult to work with."The day after the campfire meeting, I speak to Dima, who wants to tell me more about his dad. The last time he heard from him was the day before he disappeared in November 2023. "He sent a video of them all drinking tea in the forest and wrote me a message saying, 'Everything's fine, I'll call you tomorrow,'" Dima next day, Dima's mum got a phone call saying his dad was missing in action. "I started calling his mobile. Dad didn't answer. That was it. I was sitting there and I started crying. I realised I wouldn't see my dad for a while." During all our interviews with the children, including with Dima, a psychologist was present."I kept hoping until the end that Dad is a prisoner of war somewhere. Even now I still hope," Dima trauma only intensified after his mum began to look into the circumstances of his dad's disappearance. Initially she was told by the military that her husband was missing following an airstrike on his position."Then someone else called mum, the chief of something-or-other, and said the Russians shot everyone, and someone saw Dad's body lying there without any legs. Then another soldier who was at Dad's position said they saw him dead, with shrapnel wounds to the head."Dima says the effect on both him and his mother was profound."Mum cried a lot because of that. I supported her," Dima says. "When Dad left, he said, 'Dima, no matter what happens you must look after Mum because you're a man, and you're her son."'Group therapy at the camp takes place daily, held in small rooms. We are allowed to observe the start of one of the sessions - the rest is psychologists, Olena, shows a colour chart to the children, used to describe emotions. Green is happy, blue is sad, yellow is anxious or overstimulated, and red is they'll be discussing sadness. The more unpleasant and sad we feel, says Olena, the more we love the people we are sad about. That shows these people are important to us. The children are encouraged to express their feelings, including through art. At an art therapy session, many of the paintings show happy families, houses and seven-year-old boy, Zahar, tells me his painting is called "Daddy comes home." It shows yellow stick men in front of a blue sky - the colours of the Ukrainian of the children live in cities that come under near-constant bombardment by Russian drones and missiles. Like 16-year-old Nastia's hometown of Kharkiv, in the north-east of Ukraine, close to the frontline."If there's bombing nearby, I go and shelter in the corridor. I worry and stress a lot," Nastia father was also a soldier. He disappeared around a year ago on the frontline. She last saw him two weeks before he went missing.I ask her what memories of your father she has and her eyes glisten."He was very kind, he spoilt me a lot. He had a sweet tooth like me, and always knew what treats to buy me," Nastia says. "I remember only the good things about Dad. The only sad thing I remember is that he disappeared."I love him very much and I know he loves me too," she continues, adding, "I hope we can make new memories with him again."This camp also offers the kids a chance to catch up on sleep, uninterrupted by air-raid sirens - and to just have fun and play. There are regular trips to the swimming pool, hikes and games of volleyball."It's important for the body to make movements in order to heal the trauma," explains head psychologist Vanui. At the camp closing ceremony, it's time for the children and staff to say boy, Ilya, is in floods of tears - he doesn't want to go home."We have a child like this in every camp," smiles Oksana Lebedieva, the founder of points to the throngs of children playing in the garden. "Maybe for the first time in their lives, they've found people who went through the same experience. And it's very important. Group therapy is more important than anything - to see you're not alone with the pain."Oksana says the scale of the task facing her charity is overwhelming. "Millions of Ukrainian children are traumatised by war. This is a humanitarian catastrophe." Additional reporting by John Murphy
Metro
4 days ago
- Metro
'I tried to save doomed caver from most horrifying death imaginable - here's why
A first responder has described the final moments of John Edward Jones who went on a doomed spelunking trip to Utah's now infamous Nutty Putty cave and never returned. Jones, 26, suffered 'one of the most horrifying deaths imaginable' when he took a wrong turn and became trapped upside-down in a terrifyingly small crevice, essentially 'crawling into his own grave'. Unable to turn or move backwards, the 26-year-old father suffered 27 hours of hell as his family sent desperate messages of support by a two-way radio. Now, the man tasked with the impossible job of trying to free him has spoken of his ordeal. A devout Christian, medical student and father to a newborn baby, John Edward Jones seemingly had the world at his feet. Born into a large family, John and his brother Josh had been avid cavers when they were children, and sought to rekindle their love of spelunking with a trip to the Nutty Putty cave. The brothers arrived at the cave with a party of nine other friends and relatives of varying degrees of experience- a fairly large group by caving standards. Upon arrival, the group soon split off into two groups, with children and less-experienced adults exploring easier sections of the cave while the seasoned spelunkers went deeper. It was here that things started to go wrong. John's brother Josh was the first one to find him. Creeping forwards down the crevice just inches behind his brother, his stomach filled with dread when he saw John's feet sticking out of the tiny hole which had swallowed him. 'Seeing his feet and seeing how swallowed he was by the rock, that's when I knew it was serious.' Josh told the Salt Lake Tribune. 'It was really serious.' Josh tried to pull his brother out of the hole, but only managed to inch him up a little. As soon as he let John go, he slid right back into the crevice. 'There was this, 'I'm not getting him out,' he said. 'I don't know how anyone is getting him out.' As they waited for rescuers to arrive, they prayed together. At the end of the prayers, though, Josh could hear his own voice waiver and crack. John began to comfort him, telling Josh it would be OK and to be good to his girlfriend. 'The way we spoke', Josh said, 'it felt like John knew what the score was.' What transpired over the next few hours was an intense brainstorming session from a rescue party, who tried every method they could to free John from his subterranean prison. In addition to pulling him, they also tried lubing the walls and drilling away chunks of rock near John, but the hard material and the awkward position made the drilling slow and painful work. After drilling over for an hour, they abandoned this approach after only managing to drill through a couple of inches of rock. Eventually, the team came up with a plan to pull John to safety using a complex system of ropes and pulleys, which they would attach around his feet. 'How are you?' one rescuer asked. 'It sucks. I'm upside down. I can't believe I'm upside down,' John responded. His eyes were red and looked tired but otherwise, had a smile on his face. 'My legs are killing me,' he added. The team decided to take a quick break to regain their strength before making the final push. John was nearly out. But as they grabbed hold of the rope for the fourth and final time, something disastrous happened. All of a sudden, the entire team fell backwards, and the rope became loose in their hands. The closest rescuer felt something hard hit him in the face, and momentarily blacked out from the impact. At the very last moment, one of the pulleys had collapsed under the strain and flown off the wall, sending John plunging right back into the crevice – even deeper than before. John himself had become unresponsive. At this point he had been trapped for over 25 hours and his body had begun to break down from the stress and strain. In a blog post, explorer and YouTuber Brandon Kowallis spoke of first arriving when Jones 'was in and out of consciousness' and talking about seeing 'angels and demons around him'. 'I went in first', he wrote. 'As I wormed my way in I felt my feet touch something soft which ended up being John's feet. I felt them move and immediately lifted my feet and worked my way horizontally into the crack. 'After stabilising myself by jamming my body into a narrower section of the crack I began speaking to John asking him how he was and introducing myself. There was no response. 'I shifted my position a little and tapped him on the leg. I could hear him breathing a deep, gurgling breath, as though his lungs were filling with fluid. 'Then his feet shifted as though he were trying to manoeuvre his legs out of the crack he was jammed in. 'The kicking looked fairly frantic and after a second he stopped and it looked as though he had drifted into unconsciousness.' He added: 'I continued tapping him on the legs and hip to see if I could get a response, but there was no response. 'From there I spent a few minutes studying the passage, the positioning of John, and the rig that was set up, to see how we could get him out from here. It looked very bleak. I wondered if it was even possible to get him beyond this point. 'There was a request to take the radio down to John so that his family could say some words to him. I think it was his father, mother, and wife who spoke to him, telling him that they loved him and were praying for him and that his father had given him a blessing. His wife mentioned a feeling of peace, that everything would be OK. She talked to him about 5 to 10 minutes before I told her that we needed to get back to working at getting him out.' 'At that point I decided to try using the jack hammer. So we waited for it to arrive and then I carried it down to where John was located. The tool was much heavier than I anticipated and to hold it up while wedging my body in the crack took everything I had. Even then, I couldn't get a good angle on the rock because of the confined space and limitations in my own mobility and positioning.' He added: 'And even if we could get him into a horizontal position, he would then have to maneuver the most difficult sections of the passage he was trapped in. 'If he were conscious and had his full strength there was a minute chance he could possibly do it. But even if that was the case it looked grim'. He estimated it could take a week to free him using this method but now it was close to midnight and he was asked to check vitals on John. 'I didn't hear a distinct heartbeat, only some ruffling, fluttering sounds that were probably a result of me shaking as I tried to steady myself in an awkward location. I then jammed my hand between the rock and pressed as far up his torso I could go to feel for breathing. I didn't think I felt anything. 'I reported my findings to the paramedic above and then crawled out so that he could see if he could squeeze in. 'He was able to get down to the point where he could feel his feet and confirm he had passed away. John Edward Jones was pronounced dead at 11.52.' His wife Emily, still outside, refused to leave her husband's body trapped inside the cave, and the local Sheriff assured her they would recover it. More Trending But even following his death it was deemed too dangerous to attempt to recover his body, and the entrance to the passage he was trapped in was collapsed with controlled explosives. Once it became clear that John's remains couldn't be safely removed from the cave, Nutty Putty was permanently sealed off and John's family had a plaque put on the entrance of the cave in his memory. Jones's body remains entombed inside the dark cave to this day – his death becoming a cautionary tale about the dangers of spelunking. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: I died for 10 minutes — this is what it's like to be dead MORE: Trump Burger owner faces deportation from US after ICE arrest MORE: British girl,11, dies after drowning in swimming pool on holiday in Spain
