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'HOW AWFUL CAN PEOPLE GET?'

Students who dressed up as Alton Towers amputee crash victims branded ‘disgusting’ by survivor

Nottingham Uni students wore cardboard seats and foam harnesses and some tied old jeans to look like missing limbs

Joe Pugh and Leah Washington

STUDENTS who dressed up as amputee victims of the Alton Towers rollercoaster crash for a bar crawl have been slammed as "disgusting" by one of the survivors.

Joe Pugh, whose girlfriend Leah Washington lost a leg in the Smiler horror last year, hit out after pictures emerged of Nottingham University students on the "7 Legged Pub Crawl".

 Joe Pugh and Leah Washington at Stafford crown court where the owners of Alton Towers were fined £5m for safety breaches
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Joe Pugh and Leah Washington at Stafford crown court where the owners of Alton Towers were fined £5m for safety breachesCredit: SWNS:South West News Service

According to , the group, calling themselves 7 Legless, wore cardboard seats and foam harnesses and they posed for pictures waving their hands in the air as if on a rollercoaster.

Some stuffed old jeans they had tied up to look like they had limbs missing - with backs of their seats saying either "legged" or "legless".

Joe, 20, tweeted after the photos emerged online: "How awful and disrespectful can people get? Disgusting."

Leah tweeted: "Some people are so disrespectful."

 Alton Towers crash victim Joe Pugh called them 'disgusting' on Twitter
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Alton Towers crash victim Joe Pugh called them 'disgusting' on Twitter

Joe, whose knee-caps were crushed, was one of five people who suffered life-changing injuries when their car smashed into one in front on the 52mph Smiler ride in June 2015.

His girlfriend Leah, now 19, and dancer Vicky Balch, 21, each had a leg amputated following the horror crash in which victims were trapped for five hours at the Staffordshire theme park.

Those on the front row had their legs crushed in the tangle of twisted metal.

 Vicky Balch also had her leg amputated after she was seriously injured in the Smiler crash
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Vicky Balch also had her leg amputated after she was seriously injured in the Smiler crashCredit: SWNS:South West News Service
 16 people were trapped for up to five hours after the crash on the 52mph Smiler rollercoaster
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16 people were trapped for up to five hours after the crash on the 52mph Smiler rollercoasterCredit: SWNS:South West News Service

Owner Merlin Entertainments was fined £5m last month, but a solicitor for the 16 victims said: "Money will never replace limbs, nor heal psychological scars."

The 7 Legged pub crawl event, organised by the university’s charity and fundraising group Karnival, has a history of controversy.

Four years ago, students were banned from bars in the city if they turned up dressed as pervert DJ Jimmy Saville.


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