A woman has died 47 years after being left a paraplegic in an horrific head-on car crash.

Sandra Jones-Rhodes, 65, who was 98 per cent disabled, choked on food at the Chestfield House care home where she had been living since 1999.

An inquest heard she died on May 9. She was left a paraplegic after the accident in October, 1962.

Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Rebecca Cobb said: “She had swallowing problems which were the result of injuries sustained when she was the front-seat passenger struck head-on by a car travelling in the opposite direction.”

The crash happened on the A28 near the roundabout at St Nicholas-at-Wade and Sarre.

Both drivers and one other passenger were killed. Miss Jones-Rhodes, then a 20-year-old typist living in Aylesham, was thrown unconscious into a field.

She was in a coma for two months and not expected to recover. She did, but was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life, and suffered speech problems and internal injuries.

Her brother-in-law Dennis Smith said in a statement: “She was 98 per cent disabled, and although she wasn’t happy with her lot she never complained.”

Staff at the care home in Ridgeway, Chestfield, said she was “independent and stubborn”, characteristics that led her to reject the soft diet and eat “normally off the menu”.

At lunch on May 9, Miss Jones-Rhodes choked on a meal of poached fish, mashed potato and peas.

Nurse Sini Mathew rushed to her aid, and attempted CPR and the Heimlich manoeuvre but to no avail.

Miss Jones-Rhodes was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Kent and Canterbury Hospital.