Mom heard crash then found son in wreck of £1m Ferrari

File picture: Jacques Naude

File picture: Jacques Naude

Published Aug 27, 2016

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London - It was a dream come true for any teenage boy – the offer of a ride in a rare £1.2 million Ferrari.

But seconds after Alexander Worth, 13, climbed into the 200mph supercar he was dead.

The Ferrari – driven by the owner of a car storage company Alexander was visiting with his mother – had crashed into a wooden fence.

The boys’s mother heard the crash and rushed to the scene, but there was nothing she could do to save her son.

Police are investigating how the red Ferrari F50, which was due to be auctioned at Sotherby’s, came to leave a rural access road near Hook, Hampshire.

The driver, Matthew Cobden, 37, was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Alexander lived with his older brother Frederick and parents Hugo, 45, and Arabella, 47, in a £1 million detached house in the picturesque village of Kings Worthy, on the outskirts of Winchester.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr Worth is an investment counsellor at HSBC.

The University of Bristol graduate has worked for a string of investment firms since leaving the Royal Marines in 1998. Hampshire Police said the family were too devastated to comment on the tragedy, which took place just before dusk on Monday.

A spokesman said Alexander suffered fatal injuries and nothing could be done to save him.

The horror crash took place on a quiet access road leading to Toy Stor-Age, a bespoke luxury car warehouse in North Warnborough.

A witness said Alexander asked to sit in the car while he was visiting the business with his mother and a friend. Writing on a specialist car forum, he said: “It was my friend’s son. As far as I know at the moment, the mother and child were waiting at a car dealership where their friend was delivering some batteries.

“The kid saw the F50 there and asked the garage owner to sit in it. He replied that he could do one better and take him for a drive. They got less than a minute away before the mother, still waiting at the garage, heard a crash. She was the first on the scene and tried to resuscitate her son to no avail.”

Mr Cobden was taken to North Hampshire Hospital in Basingstoke where he was in a stable condition last night.

The Ferrari crashed into a bollard before colliding with the thick wooden fence.

Neighbours described the road as straight and said there are no obstacles which might have caused the driver to swerve suddenly. The 4.7-litre Ferrari F50 was one of only 349 models ever made by the luxury Italian marque to celebrate its 50th birthday.

Enthusiasts say it is effectively a road-legal Formula One car with blistering performance enabling it to accelerate from 0-60mph in only 3.8secs.

An inquest is expected to be opened and adjourned by North Hampshire Coroner Andrew Bradley on Tuesday.

Daily Mail

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