Grandfather, 84, killed by driver as she tried to send birthday message
A Sales manager killed an 84-year-old man by ploughing into his car at 50mph while trying to send a Facebook birthday message on her phone.
Wendy Thompson, 53, had been fiddling with her mobile and its power cable as she drove to a morning meeting.
Rodney lewis and his wife Marlene, 77, were parked up on the inside lane of the North Circular road in london with their hazard warning lights flashing. They were behind their 21-yearold grandson Samuel’s broken-down Ford Fiesta waiting for a recovery vehicle.
A lorry driver told police he noticed the couple’s red Hyundai stopped on the inside lane and slowed down to allow Thompson’s car to move into the middle lane to avoid it.
But Thompson made no attempt to change lanes or slow down, and crashed her VW Passat into the back of the stationary car on February 3, last year. Mr lewis, who was sitting in the driver’s seat, was flung forward by the impact and died almost instantly from a broken neck after smashing his head on the windscreen.
Mrs lewis suffered a fractured hip and shattered pelvis in the crash on the A406 near the junction with Colney Hatch lane.
Thompson immediately confessed to a driver who stopped at the scene, saying: ‘I was trying to put my charger in my phone, I just didn’t see them.’ She later told police she had also been trying to wish her friend happy birthday on Facebook.
The Old Bailey heard she would have had time to avoid the couple if she had been look- ing at the road and not been distracted by her phone. Thompson, from Barnetby, north lincolnshire, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
She was sentenced yesterday to two years and three months for the first offence and 15 months to run concurrently for the second. She was also banned from driving for ten years. Prosecutor Oliver Dunkin said: ‘She went to press send [on the message] again and was trying to put the charger back into her phone. What we have is a lady foolishly attempting to re-send a message and engaging her other hand to try and put it in to charge.’ Describing the crash, Mrs lewis said she heard her husband say: ‘Oh my God,’ before feeling a ‘ terrible bang’ as Thompson crashed into the back of them.
Mrs lewis, from Enfield, said in a victim impact statement the crash had affected her mobility and previously active social life, adding: ‘I’m leading a very lonely life, feeling trapped in my own home and spending most of the day in pain.’
Thompson worked as an area sales manager for a door installation company and drove about 1,000 miles a week around the South East of England.
Tahir Khan, defending, said: ‘She offers no excuses for what happened. She is deeply sorry. She will carry the guilt for the rest of her life.’ Penalties and fines for phone use at the wheel were increased last month after an End The Mobile Madness campaign by the Daily Mail.
ABOLISH the monarchy… Disband MI5… Scrap Trident… Slash defence… Disarm police… Mail readers might assume these are the loony policies of the Communist Party of Britain, which coincidentally endorsed Jeremy Corbyn yesterday.
But in fact they are ideas advocated by the man drawing up Labour’s election manifesto, its policy chief Andrew Fisher.
It is with some reluctance that the Mail returns again to the subject of the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition who, barely a week into campaigning, has proved beyond doubt his unfitness to run a residents’ association, let alone the country.
But it would be a dereliction of duty not to point out that, in the unlikely event Mr Corbyn found himself in No10, people like Mr Fisher would be by his side.
Indeed, aren’t voters entitled to conclude that just as Mr Corbyn shares his advisor’s views on Trident, he sympathises with many others? After all, why else would he appoint him? IN yet another example of the deadly consequences of driving while using a mobile phone, a woman wishing a friend happy birthday on Facebook ploughed into a stationary car, instantly killing the 84year-old driver and seriously injuring his wife. Following a Mail campaign there are now tougher penalties for drivers flouting the ban on phone use. But with one in six motorists admitting they still do – including for Twitter and to check work emails – police must keep up uncompromising pressure on this mobile menace. Lives, literally, are at stake. LAST week this newspaper revealed the chilling development that some GPs are being offered financial rewards not to refer patients for cancer tests. Now, we report that tens of thousands of cancer patients are not being correctly diagnosed by their GPs despite three or more visits. With survival rates among the worst in Europe, surely the case for better diagnosis – and the end of these perverse incentives – could not be clearer.