Cyclist is convicted of ‘furious driving’ over death

I have not seen one iota of remorse from Mr Alliston. Judge Wendy Joseph QC.

A CYCLIST who ploughed into a mother of two then blamed his mortally wounded victim has been cleared of manslaughter but convicted of “wanton and furious driving” following a groundbreaking trial.

Charlie Alliston, then 18, was travelling at 18mph on a fixed-wheel track bike with no front brakes before he crashed into 44-year-old Kim Briggs as she crossed a busy street in London in February last year.

Prosecutors took the unprecedented step of bringing a manslaughter charge due to the unusually grave circumstances of the case. Following an Old Bailey trial, jurors found Alliston not guilty of manslaughter but convicted him of a lesser offence of causing bodily harm by wanton and furious driving under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in jail. The former bike courier had been on his way to buy food for his girlfriend when he crashed into Mrs Briggs. As she crossed the capital’s Old Street, he twice shouted for her to get out of the way but failed to stop or avoid the head-on collision.

He sprang up and continued to shout at his victim as she lay in the road with catastrophic head injuries. Mrs Briggs died in hospital a week later. Alliston criticised Mrs Briggs and claimed she was responsible for the crash in a string of posts on social media in the days that followed.

Judge Wendy Joseph QC adjourned sentencing to September 18 and said: “I have not seen one iota of remorse from Mr Alliston at all at any stage.”

PICTURES: PA TRAGEDY: Kim Briggs, 44, top, who died after she was struck by a bicycle ridden by Charlie Alliston, inset, who was then aged 18. The fixed-wheel track bicycle, pictured left, had no front brakes.