HEALTH and safety officials may still take legal action against a theme park where a 20-year-old student died, despite a coroner not letting an inquest jury consider a verdict of unlawful killing.

The family of Durham University student Gemma Savage, who died following a collision on a rollercoaster, this week hit out after the jury returned a verdict of misadventure.

Miss Savage was injured when two cars collided on the Treetop Twister at Lightwater Valley, near Ripon, North Yorkshire, on June 20, 2001. She died in hospital a day later.

After the inquest at Skipton Magistrates Court, Miss Savage's mother, Linda, said: "We are disappointed that the coroner did not leave the verdict of unlawful killing to the jury."

She described her daughter as "beautiful, bright and loving" who had "everything to live for."

Paul Robinson, who led the investigation for the Health and Safety Executive, said legal action may be brought. He said: "In the light of today's verdict, HSE will now be reviewing and examining the evidence placed before the inquest."

The inquest heard that Miss Savage, of Wath upon Dearne, South Yorkshire, was enjoying a day out with university friends, when the tragedy occurred.

The jury heard that the collision happened as engineer Eric Butters was attempting to lower a number of cars from the ride, which had been stopped as a safety precaution by the rollercoaster's computer.

The inquest was told that he had not hit an emergency stop button which would have shut off the computer. Because of this, the computer and Mr Butters were both attempting to operate the control system at the same time, which led to the collision. But the jury heard that Mr Butters should not have been able to operate the manual controls without hitting the emergency button and was only able to do so due to a wiring fault.

After the verdict, Deputy North Yorkshire Coroner John Sleightholme told the family he was aware of their views, but hoped the hearing had meant all the information about Miss Savage's death had been aired.

Dudley Westgate, operations manager at Lightwater Valley, said later: "From the evidence provided at the inquiry, a number of different factors combined to cause this tragedy, several of which were the responsibility of others rather than Lightwater Valley."