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Speeder who killed gran escapes with a £250 fine

By James Tozer, Daily Mail, Tuesday 30 May 2000, Page 36

RELATIVES were distraught last night after the speeding driver who killed a grandmother while overtaking in the inside lane escaped with a £250 fine.

Keith Horne, 26, had been `tailgating' the car in front because he wanted to overtake.

When that driver braked - because he had seen an old lady step into the road ahead - Home swerved to the left to go past, and ploughed into 79 year-old grandmother Edna Gibbons at 50mph.

The impact was so great it severed one of her legs and propelled it into a garden.

Instead of being charged with causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a maximum 14-year prison sentence, he was accused of careless driving, for which jail is not an option. He was fined £250, banned from driving for 18 months and ordered to pay £50 costs.

Yesterday Mrs Gibbons's son Jeff, 47, condemned the sentence as 'disgusting'. I felt completely numb when I heard Horne had got away with paying just £250,' he said. `IS that all my mum's life is worth? People are fined more for dropping litter.

`The law needs to be changed - this sentence has left us feeling cheated. I wanted him jailed for what he did.' Mrs Gibbons, a retired cleaner from Kensington, Liverpool, was active for her age and used to pick up her grandsons Andrew, 15, and Adam, nine, from school every day.

She had been walking home from her regular game of bingo when the accident happened on a 40mph dual carriageway in the Dovecot area of Liverpool last November.

Her daughter Dorothy, 49, said: `She was a kind and caring person who looked after her family, and a charge of careless driving is a joke.'

Norman Larkin, of the Crown Prosecution Service in Liverpool, said Horne's driving had not been so poor as to justify a charge of causing death by dangerous driving.

He had been travelling at a similar speed to other traffic on the road and it had not been safe for Mrs Gibbons to cross, he said.

But Pauline Fielding; of the road safety charity RoadPeace, said: `This case highlights the need for a reform of penalties for people who cause death and serious injury on our roads.

`It's wholly unacceptable for a fine of £250 to be given to a person whose actions led to such tragic and fatal consequences.'

The Government is planning a new offence of causing death by careless driving which would carry a maximum jail sentence of five years.

j.tozer@dailymail.co.uk

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