Driver ‘lucky’ to survive concrete block drop

A driver has been talking about how she survived when a concrete block was dropped on her windscreen from a bridge as she drove underneath.

Lisa Horne, 26, said that she believed that “somebody was looking after me” after she and her 48-year-old mother escaped unharmed when their Vauxhall Astra was targted on the A12 in Essex on Thursday evening.

She told a news conference: “Obviously if I was going any faster, it may have been a different story. I do feel very lucky.”

Ms Home, who was driving to Chelmsford with her mother, Stella Horne, said she was still very shaken by the incident: “I am scared to drive. I don’t think I will be driving in the dark. I certainly won’t be going down the A12,” she said.

“I am scared that I may never have come home to my children. I have got two young children. It has scared me a lot and it has made me realise how precious life is.”

The incident happened under the Fryerning Lane Bridge near Ingatestone. 40 minutes after Ms Horne’s car was attacked, another piece of concrete was thrown from a different bridge – West Hanningfield near Galleywood – on the same stretch of road. The bucket-sized block of concrete hit another car, leaving a 57 year old woman with fractures to her face and ribs and internal injuries.

The woman, who is in a stable condition at Broomfield Hospital in Essex, was in the car with her husband, the driver, who suffered minor cuts and bruises.

Police are treating both incidents as attempted murder, and are investigating whether they have any definite links to more than 30 similar incidents on bridges along the A12 in Essex over the past three years.