Four quarry crash victims named

The car has now been recovered from the quarry

The names of the four men who died when a car plunged over a cliff in Blaenau Gwent have been released by police.

The black BMW smashed through a concrete barrier and went down a near-vertical slope at the disused Monks quarry at Swffryd, near Crumlin.

The men were: Jack Magee, 47, from Aberbeeg, Shane Powell, 29, from Pontypool, Alex Williams, 21, and Karl Devlin, 19, both from Newport.

Police are appealing for any witnesses to the collision to contact them.

On Wednesday, emergency services had worked for seven hours to recover bodies from the site, but severe winds and heavy rain initially hampered their attempts to bring the car back to the roadside.

The car fell over 100ft at the quarry

Fire crews eventually succeeded in hoisting the vehicle from the rocks where it had become wedged on Thursday afternoon.

Police accident investigators also carried out road tests to try to simulate the accident and find out how it happened.

Relatives and friends of one of the victims went to view the scene of the accident, where a lorry driver had earlier stopped nearby and laid flowers.

The crash happened at around at 1550 BST on Wednesday, when emergency services were called after local people heard a large bang as the car left the road and hit boulders in the quarry.

Paramedics and firefighters were on the scene within six minutes, but the occupants of the car were dead when they arrived.

Officers said it was one of the most upsetting and distressing cases they had ever had to deal with.

Superintendent Nigel Russell said the quarry site was "incredibly treacherous".

Emergency services were called to the scene on Wednesday

"The vehicle has only come to a stop where it has because it's collided with some large boulders."

Local people spoke of their shock after the accident.

One said: "When you hear of an accident on this scale - it's bad enough to hear about one person dying, but when you hear of four...going all at once, it's a terrible tragedy."

Darren Slocombe, 33, was the first person on the scene. He said it was "absolutely horrific".

"I put my hand into the car and felt for a pulse, but there was none. The top of the car was crushed.

"I was shouting into the car, but I couldn't see into the car properly because it was squashed - it's all that's been going through my head."