Bin lorry driver jailed for death of pensioner

A BIN lorry driver who reversed his recycling truck into a stroke victim’s electric wheelchair, causing the 80-year-old’s death, has been jailed.

Scott Hamilton, who was working for Stirling Council, failed to check behind before backing to let a car past on a country road.

Neither he nor his driver’s mate noticed that disabled Peter Wills, a skilled linguist who had worked for MI5 as a Russian interpreter before teaching for years in Stirlingshire schools, was behind them.

The 7.5 tonne truck collided with Mr Wills’ fourmiles-per-hour wheelchair with a “thud”.

The impact broke his neck, crushed his spinal cord, and shattered his ribs, massive injuries that stopped him breathing and led to his death in minutes.

Hamilton, 44, appeared for sentence at the High Court in Stirling after the Crown accepted his plea of guilty to causing death by careless driving on the second day of a jury trial last month.

Judge Lord Ericht told him that no sentence but a custodial one was appropriate and jailed him for 12 months.

He also banned him from driving for 12 months.

He told him: “Mr Wills enjoyed the freedom that his motorised wheelchair gave him.

“Almost every day in life he was out and about on country roads near his home. By your actions, you have caused his death, and the end of a marriage which his widow said was ‘paradise’.

“That is something you’ll have to live with for the rest of your life.”

The court heard that since the tragedy, Stirling Council recycling lorries had been fitted with reversing sensors.