Shannon Owen watched her friend play on a tree swing when the branch hit her (Picture: Hyde News)
The sister of a young NHS worker watched in horror as her sibling was crushed to death by a tree branch while they spoke over FaceTime.
Shannon Owen, 22, had been out walking in the woods of south Oxfordshire with her best friend, her friend’s brother and her pet dog on March 11.
As she was chatting on the phone with her sister, Georgia, an 18ft branch suddenly crashed on top of her, hitting her chest and severely injuring her.
Georgia watched as her phone screen showed a blur as Shannon’s phone flew through the air, Oxfordshire senior coroner, Darren Salter, heard.
Salter recorded an accidental death verdict, saying that Shannon died from a ‘freak accident’ near Whitchurch-on-Thames, a village on the Oxfordshire bank of the River Thames,
The tragedy happened after Shannon and her best friend Sinead and brother Harrison, 19, went for a walk along the Thames that afternoon.
Walking off the beaten path down a hill, the group hoped to have fun on a rope swing attached to a tree that Sinead used for some 20 minutes.
Shanon watched her friend from a tree stump just opposite when Georgia phoned her about a private and confidential letter posted through the door.
‘I FaceTimed her at 3.41pm and whilst speaking to her on the phone she was stuck by the tree,’ Georgia said in a statement read to the inquest.
The NHS administrator died of a ‘freak accident’, the coroner said (Picture: NP Picture Desk/Hyde News & Pictures Ltd)
‘It all happened so quickly. All I saw was her phone rolling down the hill, I was so, so confused.’
All Georgia could hear were Sinead’s screams before Harrison grabbed the phone and pleaded for her to phone an ambulance.
Georgia scrambled to pin exactly where the group was in the woods, relying on Snapchat maps to tell emergency services where to go.
Saltear heard how a massive rotting bough branch had snapped off the tree opposite the one with the rope swing, later rolling down the hill toward the river.
Emergency services arrived about 40 minutes later but Shannon died at the scene.
A detective constable told the coroner that police, paramedics and firefighters had ‘difficulty’ getting to Shannon as she was on an embankment.
‘When I got there it was raining heavily and was muddy and it was no longer possible to walk to the area without falling over so the fire and rescue service had to tie ropes between the trees so emergency crews could abseil down the hill instead,’ he said.
Shannon’s mother, Lisa Owen, called on the landowner ‘to prevent anyone else going through this heartache and suffering, I really do believe that there should be fencing around the woodland’.
However, in a statement to the coroner, the owner said: ‘It is not practical or desirable to put in a fence around the woodland.
‘It’s expensive and will be undermined anyway so will be pointless. I have purchased 24 private woodland signs saying “keep out” and “do not enter” which have been placed at 100m intervals either side of the footpath.’
The rotting tree was chopped down last month, some five months after Shannon’s passing.
‘The loss of Shannon in these circumstances is sad and almost unbelievable,’ the coroner said.
‘A large tree trunk fell just at a time where someone is underneath it. Some people may refer to this as a freak accident.
‘There is no third-party involvement and there were no suspicious circumstances.
‘This is just so, so unfortunate that Shannon was there when this happened. The coroner’s conclusion should be one of accident.’
‘Shannon was not just my older sister,’ Sinead added, ‘but she was also my best friend.’
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