Text driver guilty of causing death of cyclist (From Daily Echo)

Text driver guilty of causing death of cyclist

2:25pm Friday 1st February 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

A HOTEL manageress collapsed in tears after a jury today convicted her of causing the death of a teenage cyclist by dangerous driving at a Southampton junction.

They rejected her claim of 25-year-old Kiera Coultas that she had not been sending a text message to her estranged husband at the time of the crash which happened shortly after 7am on February 7 last year.

Judge Jeremy Burford QC adjourned sentence pending a probation report on February 29. But in extending her bail, he warned that should not be seen as any indication of sentence."Custody is the likely sentence for an offence of this sort."

Southampton Crown Court heard that the accident happened at the junction of Mountbatten Way and West Quay Road. The victim, scaffolder Jordan Wickington had paused at the lights in Mountbatten Way but then cycled through them when they were still red.

He was about two thirds across the junction when he was struck at 45mph by Coultas who was driving out of West Quay Road to see her estranged husband and her young daughter.

The prosecution alleged she had been answering a text message at the time, but she denied it.

The judge ordered Coultas to surrender her passport, not to travel outside England and Wales, and to live at the Fountain Court Hotel in Hythe until sentence. He also imposed an interim disqualification.