Out in three years, the drink-drive soldier who killed two girl athletes
A SOLDIER who mowed down and killed two teenage athletes while drink-driving used his car like a ‘loaded weapon’, a court heard yesterday.
Private Michael Casey was jailed for six years for killing Stacey Burrows, 16, and Lucy Pygott, 17, on a pedestrian crossing outside his barracks – but he is likely to be released after serving half.
Moments after he was sentenced, Stacey’s mother Helen, 47, shouted: ‘I do not get my daughter back in three years, do I?’
Casey, 24, admitted being drunk and distracted when he sped through a red light at up to 52mph and ploughed into the girls while they were out for a run. Witnesses said the crash sounded ‘like a bomb’. The impact sent Stacey flying 150ft and Lucy 100ft.
Stacey had competed at county level, while Lucy represented Britain last July at the European Athletics Youth Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia, winning a bronze medal in the under-18s 3,000m.
In an emotional statement from the witness box yesterday, Lucy’s mother Lisa, a teacher, said: ‘The British Army trains soldiers to kill, and he killed. Mr Casey killed with his loaded weapon, a hot-hatch car. He chose to turn the key, he chose to accelerate, break the speed limit, drive through a red light and brutally mow them down, all while knowing he was drunk. No parent should ever have to see their innocent, blameless child pointlessly killed.’
The 49-year-old described her family’s ‘constant and unremitting pain’, saying Lucy’s brother and sister ‘cry at night like wounded animals’. She said her daughter had the potential to compete at the Olympics and that Casey had ‘robbed this country of medals’. Casey, a member of 4 Rifles infantry battalion based at Normandy Barracks in Aldershot, Hampshire, admitted two counts of causing death by dangerous driving at Winchester Crown Court.
On November 8 last year, the night of the girls’ deaths, he had drunk up to four pints of beer and a ‘Godfather’ cocktail – containing three shots of whisky and three of Amaretto – at a leaving party in a pub.
During the drive back to the base at 7pm, the court heard a colleague was sick in his Ford Focus before getting out, which left him distracted as he approached the red light.
Lucy and Stacey were with a group of runners from Aldershot, Farnham and District Athletic Club. One witness recalled how Casey drove with ‘maximum acceleration’, and young athlete William Smith shouted ‘run’ when he saw the car.
After the crash a staff sergeant found Casey by a tree, saying: ‘What have I done?’
Stacey’s father Lee, 47, yesterday told how he heard the crash after driving his daughter to the training session. ‘I heard a loud bang and screams and ran down the steps frantically looking for Stacey, only to be stopped by one of the parents who told me, “It’s Stacey”,’ he said.
‘Then I saw Stacey lying in the road... I felt I died with Stacey that night. I cried with fear.’
Judge Keith Cutler said: ‘Sadly, both these children had immensely golden futures ahead of them. No sentence I can pass can bring Lucy and Stacey back.’ Casey, from Tottenham, north London, was also banned from driving for ten years.