I wish I had died instead
What scientist said after car crash killed driver and her unborn child
‘Psychological trauma’
A WOMAN who lost her unborn son in a crash in which another driver was killed said she ‘would happily’ swap places with the dead man, a court heard yesterday.
Laura Matthews- James, 35, lost control of her Fiat 500 after overtaking two cars and collided with another, a jury was told.
Robert Hitchcock, 54, who was driving the other car, died ‘probably instantaneously’ from the impact which caused multiple injuries.
Matthews-James, a biomedical scientist, was 28 weeks pregnant through IVF at the time of the crash.
Her baby was delivered stillborn by emergency caesarean section after she was airlifted to hospital.
The mother-to-be suffered fractures to both legs, her right arm and bleeding to the brain, in the crash, which happened in February last year, on the B4300 near Carmarthen, west Wales.
Matthews- James, from Penygroes, Carmarthenshire, denies causing death by driving without due care and attention.
Psychiatrist Dr Michael Alcock, who later examined Matthews- James, told Swansea Crown Court she had memories of pain but had no recollection of the accident or her first seven days in hospital.
He said Matthews- James told him she would ‘ happily swap places’ with Mr Hitchcock. ‘ Mrs Matthews- James told me her emotional state remains fragile and depressed,’ said Dr Alcock. ‘She said she didn’t want to bring a child into this world as she thought she was a bad mother having “killed my baby”.’ The court heard Matthews- James married husband Andrew in 2012 and they decided to start a family. After struggling to conceive, they underwent IVF.
Dr Alcock said: ‘There is no doubt in my mind that Mrs Matthews- James has undergone severe physical and psychological trauma. In my opinion she is suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.’
The court heard she was driving to Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen, where she worked in the haematology department, when she overtook two cars in one manoeuvre.
The driver of the lead vehicle said he would have been driving at 40mph while the court heard Matthews- James’s car was going at between 50 and 55mph. The speed limit is 60mph on that piece of road.
Matthews- James told the jury she had driven that route to work for five years and had overtaken on the same stretch of road previously as ‘you can see quite far ahead’.
The court heard there was mud and gravel across both lanes of the road at a field gate – near the point of impact – where Matthews-James would have gone back to her lane after overtaking.
Road accident investigator Peter Davey, for the defence, said these ‘ contaminants’, which could have included frozen mud, on the road surface could have been what caused her to lose control of her car.
The trial continues.