Husband’s £30k justice battle for the wife killed as car mounted pavement
THE husband of a mother mown down and killed on the pavement has launched a £30,000 battle for justice after prosecutors refused to charge the elderly driver.
Lauren Johnson, 33, was walking to the gym on maternity leave when the 72-year-old man lost control of his car, mounted the kerb and smashed into her.
The law graduate, whose children Cara and Daniel were aged just two and eight months respectively at the time, died at the scene. Police told her husband, David, 36, that the driver, who has not been named, was speeding and he was later interviewed under caution on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.
However, the Crown Prosecution Service said witnesses and medical evidence revealed the man – who claimed to have no recollection of the accident – was not in control of the vehicle at the time of the death in 2016 because of an undisclosed medical condition.
Prosecutors decided there was no realistic prospect of conviction but have refused to explain the condition shelved the to case. Mr Johnson and have
Mr Johnson, a business manager at a bank, said ‘too many questions remain unanswered’ and has launched a legal bid to get the CPS decision overturned. Last month he applied for a judicial review and disclosure of all the documents relating to his wife’s case at the High Court after setting up a £30,000 internet crowdfunding
campaign to pay his legal fees. He said: ‘The CPS say it is not in the public interest to prosecute.
‘I truly believe it is in the public interest for me to be allowed to understand why my wife was killed that day, and to understand why nobody is being held accountable. We want a full review of this case in-front of a judge and jury.
‘With so many questions unanswered, I must fight for Lauren and our two children.’
Mrs Johnson, a head of compliance at online retailer Shop Direct, was walking in Crosby, Merseyside, in October 2016 when the accident happened.
Mr Johnson’s solicitor, Yogi Amin, of Irwin Mitchell, said: ‘There is a major public interest if the CPS are not allowing such cases go to court and being judge and jury themselves. That would appear, to most fair-minded people, to be quite outrageous.’
A CPS spokesman said: ‘We ultimately concluded there could not be a prosecution as it would not be in the public interest due to the driver’s condition. This was fully set out in a letter to the family and a prosecutor met with them to explain the decision. We appreciate they have suffered a tragic loss and we offer them our condolences.’