A MAN has been charged with the manslaughter of a North-East soldier following a fireball road smash.

Army sergeant Andrew Stephen Jowers from Middlesbrough was a front seat passenger in a pick-up into which half asleep Ruben Gallardo Aguilera smashed his juggernaut head-on.

These are the findings of US accident investigators who have charged Mr Aguilera with manslaughter, following the deaths of 36-year-old Sergeant Jowers and Corporal Jonathan Train, 26, from Leicester.

The two soldiers were returning to their hotel from an allied exercise on ranges in the California and Arizona deserts when the collision occurred, last December.

Cpl Train was driving the Nissan Titan pickup, Sgt Jowers, who had been on tours of Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Iraq, was his front seat passenger.

Having snatched only four hours sleep between long haul drives to and from Mexico and California, Mr Aguilera was already in violation of US traffic laws before he veered into the path of the two soldiers on "roller coaster" Highway 78.

Mr Aguilera, who admitted to California Highway patrol investigators that he felt tired and fatigued, said he felt the second of two trailers on his articulated lorry start to swing from side to side as he entered a left-hand bend.

Officer A D Contreras, of the California Highways Department, said in a report presented to a double inquest on Teesside, yesterday, that Mr Aguilera made a sharp steering movement to the left in an attempt to regain control of his lorry.

But the truck combination swerved into the westbound lane and into the path of soldiers' pick-up.

Lieutenant Christopher Miles and Captain Nicholas Hepburn, now serving with the Army in Iraq, were in a 4x4 truck, following two minutes behind the two non-commissioned officers, when they saw flames lighting up the night sky ahead and realised there had been a crash.

The officers tried to free the trapped soldiers, but were beaten back, first by the intensity of the flames and then by a series of explosions.

All four soldiers had been involved in Exercise Torpedo Focus in the Chocolate Mountains, directing air strikes on desert ranges.

Deputy Teesside Coroner Tony Eastwood ruled that both men died as a result of an accident.

The families were too upset to speak after the inquest, but one relative said it had brought closure to the tragic episode