Eight-month-old Mabli Hall died after she and her father were hit by a BMW was they were walking in the grounds of a Welsh hospital as Rob was coming to terms with his mother’s imminent death
A dad has shared his grief after his baby daughter was killed in a hospital car park while he was pushing her in a pram.
Rob Hall had been walking in the grounds of Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest, Wales, with eight-month old Mabli as he attempted to come to terms with his mother’s imminent death from motor neurone disease.
It was then that horror struck. A car made its way across the road near the entrance to the hospital, over a pavement and straight into Rob, his brother and the pushchair that he had just strapped Mabli, his daughter, back into.
Rob was hit by the car and thrown into a nearby parking space. All he could see was her pushchair which had been trampled underneath the white BMW.
He said: “All of a sudden I heard this horrible revving and screeching. The next thing I see is this white car, airborne. That was it. I was hit and thrown into a parking bay. I was on my hands and knees and the first thing I saw was the pram underneath the car. There was chaos, people running everywhere.
“Three nurses came over and picked me up because I couldn’t walk or stand. That didn’t matter. What mattered is where Mabli was. Nobody could see Mabli. The next thing I remember is somebody walking past me holding Mabli’s lifeless body . I’ll never be able to explain what that felt like.”
Mabli had been thrown some distance due to the impact of the car crashing into the pram. The car had travelled a total distance of 28 metres and reached a top speed of 30mph, reported WalesOnline.
Mabli’s mum Gwen had been with her dying mother-in-law but rushed over to the A&E department. Mabli was airlifted to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff and from there to a children’s hospital in Bristol. Rob and Gwen entered the room where she was being treated to be faced with a sight of machines, tubes and wires, all keeping their baby girl alive.
Rob said: “She was so unwell. We kept asking if she was going to be okay but nobody could tell us. Then eventually at about 3am a doctor came in and sat down. He said that it was very unlikely that she was going to survive.
“As soon as I was told I just went sick everywhere. It was the most horrific thing you could ever hear in your life. At first we just couldn’t believe it, we didn’t want to believe it. It was brutal.
“Things just got worse and worse and worse. But at least we were able to sit with her, so we did, for hours and hours, surrounded by all these horrible noises coming from these machines.”
On the Saturday, doctors advised Rob and Gwen that the time had come to end Mabli’s life support Rob said: “Gwen’s sister-in-law was in labour that day and was due to give birth any minute, so we pleaded with the doctors not to switch the machines off yet because we did not want Mabli’s cousin’s birthday to be forever associated with Mabli’s death.”
As the clock ticked past midnight into Sunday morning, it was only Rob and Gwen that remained with their daughter in that hospital room. They sat with her, spoke to her, hugged her and kissed her, and at 12.30am on Sunday, June 25, Mabli Cariad Hall passed away.
Rob added: “It’s just another part of this story that you couldn’t write. I had nothing to do with my mum’s funeral, and I couldn’t be there when she died. All that was taken away from me. The pain of that, the trauma of it all, is actually too much to process, to even begin to describe.”
Last month, 71-year-old Bridget Curtis from Begelly in Pembrokeshire was jailed for four years after admitting causing the death of Mabli by dangerous driving. It had taken 19 months for that sentence to be passed. Their pain was heightened by what they call a “lack of accountability” from Curtis.
Rob explained: “She was interviewed with a prepared statement and answered ‘no comment’ to questions. We had not prepared ourselves to hear the words ‘no comment’. We wanted answers. To answer ‘no comment’ to questions about what happened is, in our minds, disgusting.
“From this point we were extremely angry and it was a nightmare, on top of the one we were already living through. We waited so long to find out what was going to happen and eventually, in September, 2024, Bridget Curtis pleaded guilty. That was one week before what should have been Mabli’s second birthday.
“A sentencing hearing was set for November last year and we again had to prepare ourselves for that. The build-up to every court date was horrendous; the anxiety, the pressure, you start to really feel it as it gets closer but you have to try and be strong for your other children and your family.”