A BYSTANDER said he was lucky to be alive after a skip lorry loaded with builders' waste tipped on to its side on a pavement, demolishing part of a listed wall outside Bournemouth's Pavilion Theatre.

Rob Brennan, 20, from Ferndown, had been sitting nearby on the wall when the accident took place in Westover Road at about 2.40pm on Tuesday.

"I'm just glad I'm not under it. It's lucky I'm still alive. I'm not even over the shock yet," he said at the scene.

Mr Brennan had just finished work at the YMCA and was waiting opposite to meet somebody when he saw the lorry pull up just down the road from where he was sitting.

"It backed up and tipped over. The driver jumped out of the lorry and that was it - the police turned up a few minutes later."

The road was blocked off to traffic while emergency services dealt with the incident and the vehicle was moved. A tree was also damaged.

The driver, from Stalbridge, was working for Viridor Waste Management removing rubbish from a development site in Hinton Road.

He declined to give his name to the Daily Echo, but said: "I don't know what happened. I needed to put the skip down to go round and get the other one and it tipped over. There wasn't anything I could do about it. It's lucky there was no-one on the pavement."