Border Agency director Kevin Franklin walks free after causing death
Comments |
Flowers left at the scene
of the fatal accident in which Eric Haylett died
by Keith Hunt
A top civil servant who drove the
wrong way down a dual carriageway and caused the death of a
grandfather has been spared a jail sentence.
Kevin Franklin was sentenced to six
months imprisonment suspended for a year after a jury cleared him
of causing death by dangerous driving.
The 52-year-old senior director with
the UK Border Agency had admitted causing death by careless
driving.
Franklin, of Manor Way, Bexleyheath,
was also ordered to carry out 200 hours unpaid work. He was banned
from driving for 18 months.
Eric Haylett, 75, from the Longfield
area, was killed near Bluewater shopping centre just two days after
his wife's death.
Franklin had been to the cinema at
Bluewater with his family on New Year’s Day last year when he went
alone to collect his Cherokee Jeep from a car park and took the
fatal wrong turn onto the B255 St Clements Way.
Mr Haylett was on his way home from
visiting one of his three daughters as the Jeep smashed into his
City Rover. He died at the scene.
Judge Jeremy Carey told Franklin: "It
is a feature of these kinds of cases in which a death has occurred
as a result of a dreadful collision that two worlds collide at the
time of sentence."
Driving the wrong way down the dual
carriageway, he said, was "carelessness of a very considerable
kind".
He added: "It is for that reason I
conclude it was, indeed, carelessness which fell not far short of
dangerous driving.
"The matter which tips the case away
from immediate short custody is this: That this defendant will
never recover from what has been for him a deeply traumatising
experience, just as the family of the victim will never recover –
and that is the tragedy of this case."
One of Mr Haylett’s daughters said in
a victim statement: "I am still very angry that someone can drive
in such a way that their actions take someone’s life. How can it
have happened?"
Another daughter said: "Driving the
wrong way down a dual carriageway towards another driver is not an
act of carelessness, it is extremely dangerous."
Judge Carey said it was "an entirely
understandable statement".
Monday, January 30 2012
The KM Group does not moderate comments.
Please click here for our house rules.