THE mother of a 17-year-old Otley student who escaped from a car seconds before it plunged into a river spoke this week of the support shown to her family in the wake of the accident.

Sam Glaister managed to scramble out of an open window of his mother's Citroen before it sank into the water. He was uninjured in the incident which happened in Knaresborough on Saturday, but his two friends Iain Cole, 20, and Nicholas Parkin, 19, both of Harrogate, died.

Nancy Glaister, of Riverside Park, told the Wharfedale Observer: "I would just like to say thank you for the help, support and kind messages we have had from friends and neighbours."

She said the three boys had been inseparable. Sam is a former pupil of St Aidan's CE High School in Harrogate, now studying business at Park Lane College in Leeds.

In a statement issued at the scene of the accident by family solicitor Anthony Conway, Mrs Glaister and her husband Malcolm, said it was a tragic loss.

"While we are thankful beyond belief that Sam is alive, we are devastated, as is Sam, at the tragic loss of the lives of his two friends.

"As parents, and a couple who know the two boys concerned, our hearts go out to their parents and families in their grief."

News of the tragedy was broken to Sam's father, a merchant seaman who was in the South China Sea, before arrangements were made for him to return to Otley. Mrs Glaister is a secretary and Sam has a younger brother and older sister.

The three boys had been in the car park of Conygham Hall at 2am on Saturday when the M-registered Citroen ZX rolled into the River Nidd.

Sam, who was in the front passenger seat of the car, escaped and raised the alarm. Teams of fire fighters and police were unable to rescue the trapped boys because the river had flooded after heavy rain.

Sam was taken to Harrogate District Hospital suffering from severe shock but was released on Saturday afternoon. Police said he was seriously traumatised and had been sedated by a doctor. They have spoken to him briefly about the incident but hope that later he will be able to tell them exactly what happened.

The bodies of his two friends, from the Starbeck and Pannal Ash areas of Harrogate, were recovered from the river on Sunday afternoon.

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