DRIVER GUILTY OVER OFF-DUTY OFFICER’S DEATH
A VAN driver who used his phone on a busy dual carriageway seconds before knocking down a cyclist has been found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.
Simon Draper ploughed into offduty police sergeant Lynwen Thomas, pictured, as she cycled back to her home in Carmarthen. The 42-year-old dadof-four of Meidrim Road, St Clears, had accepted causing the crash.
However, he claimed he was not driving dangerously – and also insisted that it was his 13-monthold son who had been on his phone and accessing apps such as Facebook and Instagram. However, just over three hours after beginning their deliberations, jurors at Swansea Crown Court found Draper guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.
A VAN driver who used his phone on a busy dual carriageway seconds before knocking down a cyclist has been found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.
Simon Draper ploughed into offduty police sergeant Lynwen Thomas as she cycled back to her home in Carmarthen. The 42-yearold dad-of-four of Meidrim Road, St Clears, had accepted causing the crash.
However, he claimed he was not driving dangerously – and also insisted that it was his 13-month-old son who had been on his phone and accessing apps such as Facebook and Instagram.
However, just over three hours after beginning their deliberations, jurors at Swansea Crown Court found Draper guilty of causing death by dangerous driving on Friday.
The trial heard Ms Thomas was cycling along the A40 near Bancyfelin on the evening of February 25 last year when she was struck by a Ford Transit van being driven by the defendant.
Opening the case, prosecuting barrister Carina Hughes said Draper had been “distracted” by his use of a mobile phone at the time of the collision, and that the standard of his driving was such that it was not just carless but dangerous.
An examination of the defendant’s phone after the incident showed apps including Whatsapp, Instagram and Facebook had been in use in the minutes before the fatal crash, with Draper opening and closing apps and moving between them multiple times.
The court was told that at 6.42pm the Instagram app on the defendant’s phone was closed and the Facebook app opened for the final time – at 6.43pm Draper’s van hit the cyclist.
Throughout its usage the phone was held vertically, in a portrait orientation. Miss Hughes said that driving while using a mobile phone to the extent the defendant did was dangerous, and that “Lynwen Thomas paid the ultimate price”.
The court heard that following the crash Draper was arrested and subsequently answered “no comment” to all questions asked but gave officers a prepared statement in which he said he had not been in possession of the phone at the time of the collision.
He said he had given the phone to his 13-month-old son Ted, who was in the back of the van, to “soothe” the youngster, and he added he had looked back at his son “for a split-second” and did not see the cyclist.
But paediatrician Mohammed Rahman told the jury that a child of 13 months would lack the mental capacity and manual dexterity to carry out the actions being described such as double-tapping the home button on a phone, and he said while a child might be able to “swipe” a screen – perhaps copying what he or she had seen a parent do – its movements would be “random”.
He also said a child of that age would not be able to hold a phone with one hand while performing the functions with the other.
Ashley Croaker, a passenger in a car on the A40, told police she saw a van going over the solid white line on the left-hand side of the carriageway “several times” and that the driver looked distracted.
The trial also heard of the final messages exchanged between Ms Thomas and her partner Jamie Daniel Hughes – who sent her a text to say “ride safe baby” more than an hour after the fatal crash.
Mr Hughes said when he arrived back at the house the couple had shared since 2016, he noticed there were no lights on and that the dog was “going wild”.
He messaged Ms Thomas and tried to call her but there was no answerand had “a gut feeling that something was wrong”.
In the aftermath of the crash PC Leighton Webb, who attended the scene, said Draper was “pacing up and down” along the side of the carriageway and that he was “was holding a young child”.
Draper said to the officer “I just didn’t see her” before adding “I only looked at Ted [the child in the van] for a second”.
In his evidence, Draper told jurors that he would “never forget or forgive myself.” He added: “It’s not just me it’s affected. My kids have suffered. Everybody has suffered because of what happened.
“If I could have gone to them [Ms Thomas’ family] that night to explain that I did everything I could, I would have done.”
As part of the defence case, Draper’s legal team had tried to argue that Ms Thomas was not dressed in brightly coloured clothing that fateful winter evening.
However, the prosecution said that while Draper – who pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of causing death by careless driving – had shown genuine remorse, he was doing “whatever he could” to take away the “blame” from himself.
Draper, who was released on bail, will be sentenced once a pre-sentence report has been completed.
Ms Thomas’ family said in a statement that it had been a long and painful 20 months since the collision but they had finally seen justice served on the person responsible for taking her away from them.
They said they wanted to thank their barrister Carina Hughes, the CPS and the police investigation team for “their combined effort” in seeing Draper convicted of causing Ms Thomas’ death by dangerous driving.