Rugby League hero David Myers among the dead

A family of six died after their car burst into flames when a lorry crashed into them on the M6 motorway in Cheshire.

David Statham, 38, his wife Michelle, 33, and their children, Reece, 13, Jay, 9, Nafon, 1, and 10-week-old Elouise were thought to have been travelling home to Llandudno, North Wales, after visiting relatives in Birmingham when the accident happened on Monday evening.

Mr Statham worked as a chef at St David’s College, a private school at Llandudno.

The casualties were so badly burnt, and their vehicle so damaged, that police struggled for much of the day to identify them, and to inform surviving family. For some hours, emergency services had assumed there were only five victims.

Police said that they initially struggled to identify the family because the car was so badly damaged after it was hit by the truck and then disappeared beneath it, exploding into flames on impact, during a tailback on the motorway in Cheshire.

The traffic jam had been caused by an accident about an hour earlier in which David Myers, a former rugby league player for Wigan Warriors and Great Britain, was killed.

A 46-year-old Portuguese HGV driver, who works for a Spanish haulage firm, was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. He was being interviewed with the aid of an interpreter.

The accident happened in darkness, and poor weather conditions, when the traffic had slowed to a virtual standstill following an earlier crash on the northbound section of the motorway, when a white van hit a bridge killing the driver.

The vehicle was so badly damaged that officers could only attempt to identify it through its chassis number. The recovery of the six bodies was a long and distressing process. One witness said: "there is simply nothing left".

Speaking from a bridge overlooking the scene Inspector Brian Rogers appealed for witnesses to come forwards so they could begin to reconstruct what happened. He said they were only at the start of a long and complex investigation into what he described as a "absolutely tragic collision".

He said that the carnage that greeted the emergency services was so appalling that they may require counselling.

He said: "In civilian life the nearest thing you would ever come to it is a war zone. There was the utter devastation of this vehicle and five people killed.

"I feel so sorry for the officers from the emergency services who had to deal with it. Clearly there is a welfare need for them because they will be traumatised and shocked, and also for the family.

"The worst job is telling the next-of-kin. That is the hardest job of all of them."

He added: "I simply cannot begin to go to where the family are going to have to go to. It is a tragedy."

Motorists were also affected by another crash on the M6 when a car travelling north between junctions 15 and 14 crossed the central reservation and hit a van heading south.

The intensity of the fire in the earlier accident was so fierce that emergency overnight repairs had to be carried out to the surface of the northbound carriageway before it reopened at around 7.40am, Tuesday morning.

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