Originally Posted by
caterham
a steel fork does not fail in the manner you describe. they may crack & break ,normally at the steerer or just below the crown, or bend *forward* due to the head angle & fork rake /offset. bending rearward can only happen from a frontal impact ,or something violently jamming between the fork blades or crown.
An in support of what you've written above:
http://yarchive.net/bike/fork_failures.html
To which I might reply that should the wheel be forced to a stop by either a failure the crown, one or the other blade, or one of the dropouts breaking, you would see the fork jammed backward and be left with thi result. It's also possible that the guy didn't have the wheel properly installed within the fork.
Danny