Extra year in prison for texting lorry driver who killed grandmother in crash
A former soldier who caused the death of a 79-year-old woman while using his mobile phone has had a prison term extended after his previous sentence was ruled unduly lenient.
A former soldier who caused the death of a 79-year-old woman while using his mobile phone has had a prison term extended after his previous sentence was ruled unduly lenient.
Lorry driver Joseph David Smith had been using his device to text, pay a loan, search the internet and visit a gambling site in the run-up to the accident. The last message, to discuss booking a holiday to Prague, was sent 43 seconds before the crash.
The 30-year-old was reaching down to tune the radio before his Skania car-transporter hit the back of a car in which grandmother Jeanette Wattmore was travelling back to Bristol from holiday in May last year.
Mrs Wattmore died at the scene and her daughter and son-in-law were seriously injured in the accident on the A30 near Bodmin in Cornwall. Two other motorists were also injured.
Smith, of Gillingham, Kent, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Royal Engineers during ten years in the Army, had pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving.
At Truro Crown Court in February he was jailed for 32 months. Mrs Wattmore`s daughter, Sue West, wrote to the Attorney General to say Smiths original sentence was an insult to her family.
She said: I know the prosecution accepted he had been tuning the radio at the time of the crash. But as far as I am concerned, as soon as he started using his phone when driving, he wasnt concentrating.
When Smith lifted that phone up, our world collapsed. I hate him and will never forgive what he has done and taken away from us.
On Tuesday (May 9), three judges at the Court of Appeal in London agreed to increase the initial sentence of two years and eight months after meeting with the Attorney General. A further year was added making 44 months in total for the devastating effect on the family.
Lord Justice Fulford, Mrs Justice OFarrell and Judge Farrer heard Smith had shown great remorse and was himself receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.