Heir jailed over crash that killed girl 9 years later
A TYCOON’S son was jailed for 18 months yesterday after admitting causing the death of a child – who passed away nine years after the 70mph crash that left her brain-damaged.
Antonio Boparan, heir to a £800million food manufacturing fortune, served just six months of a 21month sentence for dangerous driving in 2008.
He had been jailed after Cerys Edwards was left‘ ventilator-dependent’ following the smash a week after her first birthday.
Yesterday, as Boparan began a new jail term, Cerys’s 54year- old father Gareth said the fact he will be released half-way through his sentence – and will have served at most 15 months behind bars – was a ‘complete insult’.
Cerys died in October 2015, a month before her tenth birthday, from complications related to the traumatic head and spinal injuries she suffered in the 2006 head- on crash on a 30mph road.
Mr Edwards, a builder, said Boparan, 32, had displayed a ‘flagrant disregard for road safety’, adding: ‘Finally we can say it as it is: Boparan is a child killer. He has broken our hearts.’ Prosecutor Simon Davies said that six weeks after the November 2006 smash, while awaiting trial for dangerous driving, Boparan was caught speeding at almost twice the 50mph limit in Birmingham.
Mr Edwards, of Lichfield, Staffordshire, said despite the short sentence, he hoped the latest case would encourage drivers to act responsibly.
In December the Daily Mail revealed Boparan, also jailed for a year in 2015 over a bar assault, had been summoned to court again after the Attorney General said it was in the public interest to level fresh charges.
Birmingham Crown Court heard that before the crash, Boparan, then 19, was seen overtaking two cars and forcing a third to brake sharply to avoid hitting his Range Rover Sport head-on.
The driver of that car described seeing Boparan’s car ‘wobbling as if losing control’ before ploughing into the Edwards’ Jeep as he swerved to avoid a car. The force of the impact shunted the Jeep more than 40ft down the road, where it collided with another vehicle. Cerys was left needing 24-hour specialist care but in 2014 her condition deteriorated and she was taken to hospital with a worsening respiratory condition that September. She never went home and died 13 months later.
James Sturman, defending Boparan, said his client had ‘genuine remorse’ and that it would be ‘unjust’ to put him back in prison.
However, Judge Melbourne Inman QC handed Boparan a new 18-month jail term and said: ‘ The quality of her [ Cerys’s] short life was destroyed… finally she yielded to her injuries and disabilities and your criminal actions took her life away from her.’
Boparan’s father, Ranjit Singh Boparan, founded the 2 Sisters Food Group, whose parent firm has a turnover of £3.3billion.
After Boparan was released early in 2008, Cerys’s parents launched a campaign that led to a law change. ‘Cerys’s Law’ has ensured anyone convicted of causing serious injury by dangerous driving can be jailed for up to five years.