£30,000 bill for family as injured jet ski boy returns to UK

A 14-year-old boy seriously hurt in a sea scooter crash on a Caribbean holiday has returned to the UK.

Matt Hewitt, from Measham in Leicestershire, was riding a personal watercraft with his uncle when it hit a boat off St Lucia three weeks ago. He suffered brain damage and doctors feared he would not survive.

But this week he was well enough to fly back home with his father and was taken to the Queen's Hospital in Burton to continue his recovery.

His mother Gillian said: "He was hospitalised in St Lucia for six days and when I last saw him he was unresponsive, unconscious and on a ventilator, being taken out to an air ambulance to fly to Martinique. So to see him sitting here now playing on a playstation is just beyond anything I could ever have imagined."

But his father Richard said there had been problems with insurance: "Basically we don't stand anywhere. The day after the accident we informed the insurance company that Matthew had had an accident, and within half an hour to an hour of me getting back to the hospital they told me I wasn't covered. So basically eveything that's happened now, we've had to do by ourselves."

He said the total coast would be just short of £30,000.

The holiday had been intended to be a joint celebration of the couple's 40th birthdays: "It was just an horrific end to an absolutely brilliant holiday," Mr Hewitt added.

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