Alton Towers crash victim Leah Washington with boyfriend

Alton Towers Smiler crash victim Leah Washington celebrated Valentine’s Day with her boyfriend Joe Pugh early as they stepped out in Leeds together.

Leah, then 18, lost a leg when the rollercoaster carriage she was in smashed into a stationary train at the Staffordshire theme park in June 2015.

She had only been with her boyfriend Joe six weeks when he was also injured in the crash – leaving him with smashed knee caps and having to learn to walk again.

But three years on they are still going strong, with Leah claiming their shared tragedy could mean they stay together forever.

In an interview with Cosmopolitan Leah Washington, 20, said: ‘I honestly think we have a real chance of being together forever. Joe and I both understand what the other one has been through in a way that no one else can.’

Leah Washington and Joe Pugh, from Barnsley, were spotted out in Leeds on an early Valentine’s Date on Friday night

Leah, then 18, lost a leg when the rollercoaster carriage she was in smashed into a stationary train at the Staffordshire theme park in June 2015. Joe also had to learn to walk again after he was injured in the crash

Leah Washington, 20, from Barnsley reveals her belief that she and her boyfriend Joe Pugh have a good chance of being together forever after supporting each other through their recovery from the Alton Towers Smiler crash

The pair, from Barnsley, were spotted out in Leeds on an early Valentine’s Date on Friday night.

They were all smiles as they made their way to Tattu bar, Leah dressed in a green co-or and Joe in a dark checked shirt and ripped jeans.

After learning she’d lost her leg, Leah was not sure Joe would want to be with an amputee and was sure he would let her down gently by breaking up with her once she’d regained her strength.

She later found out that even her brother had spoken to Joe and told him he didn’t have to stay with Leah if he couldn’t cope, but he insisted.

Leah wears a state-of-the-art £60,000 prosthetic leg which allows her to walk unaided

As they recovered, Leah said they took time to get to know each other again and found a new honesty in the relationship.

‘After the accident, there was no pretence,’ she explained. ‘We had no choice but to be completely honest and share everything.’

Despite having a state-of-the-art £60,000 prosthetic leg which allows her to walk unaided, the teenager still suffers crippling pain and fatigue after standing for long periods.

She was unable to take up her place at university and her family had to move from their home to a specially adapted bungalow.

Initially Leah feared that Joe wouldn’t want to be with her because she was an amputee

eah (second left) was on a date with her boyfriend of just six weeks, 18-year-old Joe Pugh (far left), who suffered devastating injuries during the crash himself

An investigation into the 2015 accident concluded that the crash was due to human error; an engineer had wrongly restarted the ride while a stationary carriage was on the track in front of it.

Alton Towers owner Merlin Attractions were fined £5million for health and safety breaches blasted by Judge Michael Chambers QC as a ‘catastrophic failure’.

They were fined an initial £5million, and interim payments have covered Leah and Joe’s medical and physio bills to date – but the pair have also submitted a ‘substantial’ compensation claim.

It must be love: Happy couple Leah Washington and Joe Pugh were on one of their first dates when they were injured in a crash at Alton Towers three years ago

What happened during the Alton Towers Smiler crash?

On June 2, 2015 visitors were removed from the ALton Towers Smiler ride after a warning light indicated a fault.

Staff sent a test train around the track, but it didn’t make it around. Due to a breakdown in communication, staff did not realise this carrigage was still sitting on the track.

Passengers were let back on but as the first carriage made its way around, the computer system stopped it because it showed something was blocking the track.

Engineers were still not aware that there was a fifth carriage sitting on the track and overrode a fault which had been detected by the computer system, sending the ride crashing into an empty carriage with the force of a ’90mph car crash’.

At least 16 were injured and five people were seriously hurt. Leah Washington from Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and Vicky Balch from Leyland, Lancashire, were both forced to undergo leg amputations as a result of the horror crash.

Joe Pugh also from Barnsley and Daniel Thorpe, 28, from Buxton, Derbyshire, also suffered serious leg injuries, along with 49-year-old Chandaben Chauhan.

The trapped ride-goers had to wait more than four hours to be freed from the crumpled carriage while rescue workers battled to reach them as they sat 25ft up in the air at an angle of about 45 degrees, pinned in by the mangled metal.

In September 2016, Stafford crown court heard staff were under pressure to keep the ride in almost constant use and offered bonuses to keep it running. Some had not even read the manual for the £18million rollercoaster.

The court also heard engineers should have seen the empty carriage which was visible on CCTV cameras covering the track.

In its investigation, the safety watchdog found that a ‘near-gale’ may have been to blame for the empty carriage failing to clear the Cobra Loop in the first place, following an early problem with one of the ride’s lifts.

Prosecuting for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Bernard Thorogood said that although there had been ‘a number of human errors’, the ‘fault is with the employers’, and not individuals.

The prosecutor went on to say that none of the four engineers involved in working on the Smiler ‘had the full picture or understanding of conditions on the ride’.

He said one engineer who worked on the Smiler that day told investigators after the crash that he had ‘assumed’ the rollercoaster had been fitted with a type of safety trip-switch present on at least one other park ride, when in fact it had not.

Leah’s £60,000 prosthetic leg – which contains a microprocessor knee – will need replacing every few years, which will amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds over her lifetime.

Loss of earnings also being taken into account, with experts saying the teen can expect a payout ‘running into the millions’ – but Leah insists she has no idea what the true figure will be.

Leah, then 17, had just finished school and passed her driving test on the day of the crash, and has a ‘hazy’ memory of the hours following her accident – but remembers waking up from an induced coma the following day to be told that her left leg had been amputated below the knee.

‘I just cried and told [the doctor] to stop talking to me,’ she recalled.

However Leah, who was just a teenager when it happened, has remained positive since the accident, building a blog and keeping fans updated with her inspirational life story.

The happy couple had only been seeing other for six weeks when they visited the Staffordshire theme park

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk