Tributes have been paid to a bus driver and his wife who were killed after their car plunged over a 300ft cliff on the Isle of Wight on Friday evening.
John and Lynn King’s Ford Mondeo fell into Alum Bay, within sight of the Needles rock formation.
The couple and their dogs were found dead in the part-submerged wreckage of their car on the rocks beneath a clifftop coastal road that snakes around the western tip of the island.
The Needles landmark was closed by officials as emergency units responded to the incident
DARREN TOOGOOD/ISLAND ECHO/SOLENT
John King, 67, had been a bus driver on the Isle of Wight. His wife, 66, had been in ill health and was rarely seen outside their terraced home in Cowes, the seaport town on the north of the island, a 40-minute drive from where they died.
The local bus company Southern Vectis said King had worked for the firm for two and a half years before leaving this year.
“We are saddened to learn of this tragic event and our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time,” said Richard Tyldsley, the general manager at Southern Vectis.
King had previously worked for Stagecoach South in Hampshire, when the couple lived in Southsea for about 15 years.
George Gibson, a bus driver who worked with him in Hampshire, said he was “absolutely shocked” at the news. “He was a true friend to me during my low times … I’ll miss them both,” he said.
Lynn King was reported to have been cared for by her husband and rarely left the house in the years leading up to their deaths
A neighbour told Mail Online that King had been a carer for his wife and that she had seen him help her into their car hours before their deaths.
“Their two dachshund dogs were with them,” she said. “His wife looked really, really frail. She was hunched over quite badly and was finding it very difficult to walk. I was surprised to see her out of the house.
“That was the last time I saw them. They never came home.”
The neighbour said she had seen the wife “maybe twice in the three years they’d been living in the road”.
She added: “I don’t know exactly what she was suffering from but I think it was serious. John was effectively her carer. I never saw nurses or medically trained staff ever go in. I think he did everything for her.”
Residents on the couple’s road said they heard police officers “thumping on the door” at about midnight on Friday.
The neighbour said: “John drove for a living and knew these roads on the island like the back of his hand.
“He’d mowed his lawn for the first time in three years last Wednesday — two days before he died. He’d never done that before, ever. But for some reason he only cut a small patch of the garden, close to the back of the house. I thought that was unusual.”
Emergency services were called to Alum Bay at about 7pm after the car plummeted off the cliff.
Kevin Parsons, 70, an ex-colleague and friend of Mr King, said their car had driven off a narrow private road which only buses are normally allowed to use.
“Public cars don’t go on that road… it’s a very narrow road,” he said.
Parsons said he had only met Mrs King a few times. “I heard the other day somebody said that she had had a terminal diagnosis,” he said. “What it was, I don’t know.
He said Mr King may have had a medical episode, given he had a heart attack a few years ago and was off work for a year.
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