Lorry driver in death crash ‘was looking at phone porn’
A LORRY driver was looking at pornography on his mobile phone when he careered into a brokendown truck, fatally injuring its driver, a court heard.
Felix Gillon searched Google and then looked at galleries of images for up to four minutes before the crash, a jury was told.
It caused him to speed up and slow down erratically, veering on and off the hard shoulder before smashing into Kerry Pemberton’s lorry, which was parked on the hard shoulder, it is alleged.
Mr Pemberton, who was standing nearby, was crushed against a safety barrier when his Iveco lorry was pushed into him by Gillon’s Scania. As he lay trapped under his truck, Mr Pemberton, 55, told a man who had stopped to help how proud he was of his five children and grandchildren, and asked for someone to phone his wife, Leicester Crown Court heard yesterday.
Gillon, 56, had failed to see Mr Pemberton or his broken-down lorry, the jury was told.
After the crash, Gillon snapped his SIM card and threw away his mobile phone to try to hide what he had been doing, but a policeman spotted him and the phone and SIM card were recovered.
Prosecutor James Bide-Thomas said Mr Pemberton, from Birmingham, pulled on to the hard shoulder of the M69, near the A5 slip road in Leicestershire, on May 3 last year. He survived the initial impact but died later in hospital.
Mr Bide-Thomas said: ‘An examination of the mobile phone thrown away by the defendant may provide an explanation for the defendant’s manner of driving. Around four minutes before the collision, the defendant’s phone was used to access the internet. A search for “porn star candy love” was entered into Google.
‘From then until the time of the collision, 25 webpages were accessed. Some of these were galleries of pornographic images and some of them were the images themselves. The prosecution say the defendant was using his handheld mobile phone to view pornography while driving his lorry.
‘He was paying so little attention to the road that he failed to see Mr Pemberton’s broken-down lorry on the hard shoulder.’
Jonathan Lambert, a retired Army medic, who stopped to help Mr Pemberton, said: ‘He kept asking if the other driver was OK. He told me he was 55 and married with five children. He loved his wife deeply and was incredibly proud of his children and grandchildren. On his mobile phone were pictures of his wife and best friend.’
Gillon, of Bedworth, Warwickshire, denies causing death by dangerous driving, and doing acts intended to pervert the course of justice. The trial continues.
‘Looked at images for four minutes’