LONDON, SEPT 19 : An 80-year-old Indian-origin bus driver, suffering from dementia, was on Tuesday found by a UK court to have caused the deaths of two people with his dangerous driving in the city of Coventry nearly three years ago.
Kailash Chander was deemed unfit to stand trial for the fatal crash due to his mental state and the jury at a “trial of facts” hearing at Birmingham Crown Court was directed to only determine whether Chander “did the acts”.
Chander, a former town mayor of Leamington Spa, mistook the accelerator for the brake before the fatal smash, which caused the death of seven-year-old schoolboy Rowan Fitzgerald, who was sitting at the front of the upper deck of the bus and died of a head injury.
76-year-old pedestrian, Dora Hancox, died from multiple injuries after being hit by the double-decker bus and a falling lamppost when it crash into a supermarket in October 2015.
Chander had been warned about his “erratic” driving after four crashes in the previous three years, the court was told. It was said he had struggled to punch a ticket seconds before the fatal crash because his hands were shaking.
Judge Paul Farrer, summing up the case at the hearing, said one witness had described the movement of Chander’s double-decker bus as appearing to have “no driver with the accelerator jammed on”.
(Agencies)
Comments are closed.