Engineer tells of `I messed it up' remark.

A theme park engineer told a colleague "I think I messed it up," moments after two cars collided on a roller coaster, leaving a 20-year-old student fatally injured, an inquest heard yesterday.

Eric Butters described how he was lowering cars down from the Treetop Twister ride at Lightwater Valley, in North Yorkshire, when the accident happened which left Durham University student Gemma Savage dead in June 2001.

Electrical engineer Mr Butters told the inquest jury at Skipton how he was called to the ride after the computer system halted all its cars. He said he began to take cars down one by one by releasing brakes on the roller coaster using a special manual controller.

Mr Butters said he told a colleague straight after the accident words along the lines of: "I think I messed it up." The inquest has been told how manual controls for bringing stuck cars down from the roller coaster should only have worked once the ride's emergency stop button had been pressed to disable the computer. The jury has heard how a wiring fault on the ride enabled Mr Butters to use the controller without hitting the emergency stop which would have disabled the computer. Yesterday Mr Butters said he had received just one hour of training on how to operate the Treetop Twister.

The hearing continues.