Huddersfield pair rescued from blaze-hit hotel

Jul 2 2009 By Neil Atkinson

TWO holidaymakers from Huddersfield were rescued from a hotel blaze in Turkey.

Tara Walsh, 36, and 13-year-old Beth Jones were saved by firefighters from a fourth-floor balcony as flames tore through the Club Anastasia complex in Marmaris, just hours after they began a holiday.

Both were unhurt, but seven other British guests were taken to hospital with slight injuries.

Ms Walsh said she was staying at the hotel with her late friend’s children, Beth Jones, Ellis Jones, 14, and their grandmother Inez Crowther.

The children’s mother Zoe Williams was killed in a car crash on the M1 in August 2004, together with her husband Paul, only 12 hours after they were married at Huddersfield Register Office.

The pair had been together six months, but were killed instantly as they returned home to Newsome Road, Newsome, after a wedding night out in Leeds.

Unqualified speeding driver Damian Sylvester, of Sheepridge, who was at the wheel of their car, was jailed for four years in January 2006.

Ms Walsh said: “We were in our apartment on the fourth floor and we heard a massive commotion, but we thought it was people coming in from a night out drunk.

“We found out later it was people trying to break open the fire escapes. We opened the door and the corridor was just filled with black smoke and we could not see anything.

“So we had to go out on the balcony and shut the doors.