Baby Louis Thorold: mum takes first steps after tragic crash

The mother of a baby killed when a van hit his pram has taken her first steps after being severely injured in the incident.

Rachael Thorold, 36, was pushing her five-month-old son Louis in a pram along the pavement of the A10 at Waterbeach when they were both struck by a van that left the road on January 22.

After being discharged from intensive care, Rachael is now at a rehabilitation hospital in London and is “getting better every day”, according to her husband, Chris Thorold, who says she could be home as soon as next month.

Chris told the Cambridge Independent: “She is doing well. She was on her feet walking today for the first time in 77 days.

“She still has a cast on her broken leg but she’s getting better every day.”

Chris, the finance director of Marshall Aerospace and Defence Group, said the family have established the Louis Thorold Foundation to campaign for better protection for children, pedestrians and cyclists on our roads.

The Thorold family has already persuaded the county council to make changes on the A10 and to the junction where Louis and Rachael were walking when they were hit. However, inside today’s edition, we report how Chris has been upset by a local councillor’s election leaflet, which he believes sought to “take credit” for some of the foundation’s work.

Chris added: “Rachael is wanting to get more involved with the charity now as she comes to terms with what happened.

“I think she’s like me in that when you’re feeling sad, you can turn that sadness into energy and something good. The way we deal with this is we make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone again. Because it happens all too often, unfortunately. And it’s all preventable. You have to believe it’s all preventable so we can protect our children and vulnerable road users.

“Rachael is really proud of what we are doing, although I think she has only been aware of this for about four weeks. As she gets better and we get her home I think she will start stepping into doing stuff for the charity as well. She’s probably a lot better at it than I am because she deals with this sort of stuff every day at her job with a council in Surrey.”

Chris spoke with the Cambridge Independent on the day that his wife had taken her first steps, but other signs including “positive” scans lead him to hope she will be back home soon.

“I think by the end of May she will probably come home,” he says.

“She is currently in a specialist rehabilitation hospital and she’s there specifically to get better. She’s not having an acute phase of treatment anymore. They are not just keeping her alive anymore, which was the case in the first six weeks. This was looking very bleak at various points so she is very lucky – in one sense, obviously – given the injuries that she’s got, which are quite shocking, that it looks like she will walk away from this. She’s going to have some issues, but they are nowhere near what this could have been.”

Where their home will be is a question the couple have not decided. Chris is unsure whether they can bear to continue living in Waterbeach after the tragedy of losing Louis.

“We’ve only lived in Waterbeach for about a year. I think when my wife comes home she’s not going to be happy about living in the village and I’m not happy about passing the place where it happened every day. We will never forget Louis, but we can’t face these constant reminders.

“That particular junction is not a nice place and I think we might move somewhere else in Cambridge or move back to Surrey. We will see when Rachel gets home. We will take it from there.”

Even if they move away, the Thorolds plan to continue campaigning for road safety improvements for pedestrians.

Chris explains: “Our first aim was to get something fixed on the A10. That has been a dangerous place for way too long and hopefully in the next month and a half various fixes will be put in place to make it safer for pedestrians. And by the end of this year it will be very safe for pedestrians.”

These improvements include speed restrictions and railings separating the pavement from the road.

He adds: “I think our next step will be to try and take on some of the law-making and some of the wider issues with this.”

And now his eyes have been opened to dangers for pedestrians, Chris admits there is lots of work to do: “When I drive home from visiting Rachael at the hospital in London, I have a good hour and a half go to Cambridge. I drive past junctions and pavements and I can’t help but think, ‘that’s really badly designed’.

“Everywhere you look you see 50mph roads with exposed pavements and know a child could get hurt there one day.

“There’s a lot of places where we are playing Russian roulette with people for no good reason, other than saving a bit of money or putting cars first. There’s a load of things to work on. We are not going to stop here. We will make some changes locally and then we will start tackling some bigger issues.”