The driver in the Wimbledon school accident won't be charged?

[RiverF]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw4448xx4keo

It sounds like a unavoidable and unforeseeable medical incident led to the tragedy, but the families wanted justice.

I can't begin to imagine their pain, but this is the right decision?

I know that inquests can give verdicts of unlawful killing if the coroner finds that the persons were killed without lawful excuse and in breach of criminal law. But I don't know if that means the CPS then have to prosecute. Given what we know already about this case, I'd imagine it would be a verdict of accidental death. The driver did not mean to kill those girls.

Apparently, it was her first seizure and she had no history of epilepsy. Entirely unavoidable. No-one is to blame for the accident. Very sad for the families who must live with this loss all their lives. Very sad for the driver, too, who must live with knowing she inadvertently killed two children.

The law already covers this. What is even the point of making suggestions like this.

1 in 25 people will have an unprovoked seizure in their lifetime This could be you tomorrow or the next day.

I have been involved in a couple of cases where the police have investigated potentially suspicious deaths. In my experience it is a detailed and prolonged process, both in terms of the police collecting the evidence and the CPS reviewing it.
I imagine more detail will be revealed at inquest. I expect the medical experts will be called to give evidence. Although the purpose of an inquest is not to apportion blame and they are not meant to be adversarial the families will be entitled to legal representation and being cross examined as a medical witness at an inquest is not an enjoyable experience. The medical evidence, in my experience at least, is questioned in depth by the Coroner and, if present, by the family's legal team.
It is a particularly emotive case and I have great sympathy for the families for their losses but I see no reason to suspect that the medical staff, police and lawyers involved have failed to do their jobs properly. Given how high profile the case is they will know that they are likely to have their work scutinised by many people so I highly doubt they would have cut corners.
I'd probably want someone's head on a plate if my child had died in such horrific circumstances too but tragic accidents do happen. We have legal processes and they have been followed. There is no place in a civilised society for trial by public opinion.

I don't talk about this much in any graphic detail but because there is a lot of misapprehension about epilepsy on this thread I thought I'd so so.

I never had a seizure until I was 19 - it changed my life and not in a good way. I had to stop driving having only just passed. I struggled with my degree because I was always so tired and very often in pain post seizure.

As many of mine were nocturnal I'd sometimes wake up on the floor in a pool of my own urine with a bitten tounge and feeling like I'd gone 10 rounds in a wrestling ring. Often there would be bruises or I'd have hit my head. That was what happened with my first seizure - first term at uni - first time living away from home - never happened before. First few times I was so ashamed (imagine at 19 you start wetting yourself and falling out of bed!) I told no one and then when I went to the GP he firstly assumed been drinking heavily or taking drugs.. I hadn't.

In fact because they were nocturnal, I was sleeping before and and no one was seeing them it took a long time to work out what was happening and I went through every test under the sun. They were checking for heriditary diseases, running neurological tests, it felt endless. They even made me see a psychiatrist as my mental health was suffering. To be honest I was so frightened I was going to die

Was also having absence seizures - missing chunks of lectures, suddenly not knowing how I got somewhere, blanking out in conversations and I still do that.

It was only late in the second year when a lecturer recognised an absence seizure for what it was that things started to make any sense

Seizures can happen very suddenly and out of the blue - completely debilitating and sometimes with horrific impacts and sadly it seems this is what happened in this awful case.

I dont like talking about this but i hope it helps so of you understand.

Sadly, it isn't a particularly unusual case. There have unfortunately been quite a lot of cases involving drivers having seizures unexpectedly and having accidents, some of them fatal.

The only thing that makes this case unusual is that it was widely reported at the time, and it was reported because of the specific factors including the accident in a school, the fact that this was an exclusive private school, the injuries caused and, in particular, the awful fact that two children died. News reporters knew that this would catch the public interest. Had this been a case of the driver having exactly the same seizure but instead simply going off the road and, maybe, causing injuries to an unphotogenic adult, we wouldn't hear anything about it. But the potential culpability of the driver would be exactly the same. So why is it in the public interest to have a trial in the first case but not the second?

It should be unnecessary to point out that the fact that the public are interested does not necessarily mean that a trial is in the public interest.

@DataPup

"If it was so clear cut, why has it taken a year to come to this conclusion? That's the bit I find odd"

Because of the back log in legal cases that's how long it takes something to come to court or be processed by the police.

Just because it’s law doesn’t mean it’s followed. We’ve all heard about killer drivers being given a slapmon the wrist suspensed sentences for killing someone when the max sentence is many years in prison.

Indeed - if (for example) she'd had a heart attack or stroke with no prior warning, it would be exactly the same. We can't prosecute people where there's no actual crime committed.

@Bikesandbees - the CPS have seen all the relevant evidence, which will include the woman's medical records as they pertain to this - so they will have seen that she had no previous record of seizures and that she has since been diagnosed with epilepsy. These are the facts, and if the CPS - who are the experts in what will and will not constitute a crime - think that the facts prove that this was a horrible and unavoidable accident, with no criminal liability, then what is achieved by taking it to court?

If it did go to court, the CPS would present the evidence, and the defence would present the same evidence because it is exculpatory - it proves her innocence - and that would be the end of it.

But for that to happen, you would have to assemble the prosecution and defence lawyers, the witnesses, the experts, the doctors, the jury and all the other court staff - and all for nothing. And the costs of this would come out of the public purse.

In the meantime, cases with strong evidence of deliberate criminal acts would get bumped down the list, and victims would wait longer for justice. Even if you only did this for cases where there was public outrage, you would still end up crippling the justice system, and that would benefit no-one except the real criminals.

Can you explain what this woman could have done to prevent herself having an entirely unforeseen seizure whilst driving? Because if you can prevent seizures in people who don't know they are about to develop epilepsy, then the medical community will be beating a path to your door!

Some things are just horrible, tragic accidents - not everything is someone's fault. Dh and I had a tyre blow out on the motorway a while back. Luckily we were able to get onto the hard shoulder without causing any problems for anyone else, but it could have been very different - that blowout could have caused an accident where people could have been hurt. We maintain the car well, and before a long journey, dh always checks the tyre pressure and the tread depth - he checks these regularly anyway, and tends to be more conservative than the guidelines, so replaces tyres that are still legal and safe enough, rather than take a risk - but we still had a blowout. It was not foreseeable that a tyre in good condition would blow out - and if anything bad had happened, it would have been an accident, not our fault.

This case is the same. She didn't know she was going to have a seizure and lose control of her car - so what happened was an awful, tragic accident.

People keep saying this.

She probably won't, shes just a random woman, who presumably if she had a seizure can't even recall the crash itself. It was a horrible day, but she's not tortured by it.

It's the parents who will be tortured. They have to temper their child's last moments that way. It stings to see a photo of their child. It punches them in the chest.

That makes perfect sense, Youdontevengohere, and in any case crying that "the public want to see ..." is pointless since it isn't the general public deciding a case even if it does go to court (though they can read the transcripts of judgements afterwards if they wish)

I once heard it suggested - wish I was joking about this but I'm sadly not - that all trials should be screened and the public able to vote online for who's guilty and who's not

A friend of ours was diagnosed with epilepsy after a car accident (she was at fault) she woke up with her car in the back of somebody else's vehicle and not having any recollection of what happened.

Sometimes shit happens and it's no one's fault, just a tragic accident.

The parents want someone to blame, I get that it's part of their grief, but in this case everyone loses, there is no blame attributable.

It can definitely occur at any time in your life without warning.

Of course it’s the right decision! She had a seizure that came out of the blue.

My cousin had a seizure when she was pregnant. That was the only seizure she’s ever had and that was around 25yrs ago. In comparison, a friend had a sudden seizure in her 30s and was subsequently diagnosed with epilepsy and is on medication.

In theory, any one of us could have a seizure even though we hadn’t been diagnosed with epilepsy, just like in theory anybody could have a heart attack with no history of heart disease.

It would only have been a crime if this lady had epilepsy, had had her licence removed because she didn’t pass the medical criteria, and then got in a car, driven and had a seizure. She did none of that. She didn’t have an epilepsy diagnosis, she had a valid driving licence, and by chance she had her first seizure while driving, resulting in this awful accident and the tragic deaths of those two precious girls. It’s horrific - but it was an accident, just like if she’d suddenly had a heart attack or a stroke that causes her to lose control of the vehicle and/or lose consciousness.

I would 100% disagree. Of course this woman will be tortured for the rest of her life!

The law says a driver who has a seizure has to be seizure free for 12mths before regaining their license. This makes their seizure risk the same as anyone else. This is absolutely followed by the DVLA. What have suspended sentences got to do with that?

Some of these comments are bordering on discrimination.

@FantasticFork* *
She probably won't, shes just a random woman, who presumably if she had a seizure can't even recall the crash itself. It was a horrible day, but she's not tortured by it.

How can you possibly presume that? a horrible day? Bloody hell, talk about understatement .

I’m just a random woman. I’d never set foot in a car again. I doubt I’d ever sleep without nightmares again.

Most people have a conscience.

The prosecution was not weighing the defence evidence. It was weighing its own evidence, and could see that they have no evidence that this woman committed a crime. They are not deciding on guilt or innocence, they decide whether there is enough evidence to support a prosecution.

If you are saying they should not do that, you are in effect saying that, every time one person sees fit to make an accusation against another, no matter how baseless, if it hits the newspapers that person must be charged and come to court. I could phone the police and the papers now and say "Berringtons deliberately drove her car into my child this morning" and if the papers decided to run with that, the police would have to charge you and bring you to trial, even though you could prove you were miles away at the time. Would that be remotely sensible?

@FantasticFork She's a "random woman" who suddenly discovered she'd killed 2 children and wasn't even aware what was happening The shock, trauma and guilt of that will not suddenly disappear.

Of course it's utterly and completely devestating for the girls families nobody is disputing that - they'll never get over it either.

A lot of lives were ruined that day

I really hope I am never in a situation where I have to face trial by jury.

There was a very similar accident not too far from where I live about 2 weeks ago. A Range Rover mounted a pavement and killed a pedestrian. As yet I haven't seen any further information but it was suggested at the time that it may have been a medical episode. In this case though the victim was an elderly man. I don't think it even made the national press.

Epilepsy can be incredibly difficult to diagnose. It was only when DD had her first tonic clonic seizure and ended up in hospital and then proceeded to have another in front of all the medics that her consultant said that she could now be sure that DDs previous seizures were epileptic. This was despite the fact that she had been on anti-convulsant medication for a number of years and had had several ECGs.

There are so many armchair experts around today. Have we learned nothing from the Nicola Bulley case?

How ridiculous! Yes, of course, the parents pain is unimaginable and incomparable, but if you inadvertently killed two children it wouldn’t affect you in the slightest?? Because they were ‘random’??!

@FantasticFork oh she will be tortured. How can you possibly make the assertion that she won't be? Tonic clonic seizures (if that's what she had) can be catastrophic to the person having them. Added to that she has to live with the wider consequences that she killed two children. She'll feel like a ticking bomb for the rest of her life. Horrible.

I really can't believe some of the lack of understanding on here. Epilepsy is horrible. She had no warning or inkling. It's an awful, awful tragedy. It could happen to any of us. Just like a heart attack or stroke at the wheel of a car.

Of course the parents' suffering is greater, no one is disputing that. But to say it was simply a 'horrible day' for her is so callous. She was there, at the scene, knowing it was her car that had hit them. Of course that would torture a person.

I'm saying in this specific, very unusual, case it would be good for the public to see the evidence.

Why? so the public know who this woman is and every vile troll can send her and her family death threats?

And once you make an exception for something being a specific and very unusual case people start baying for other cases to be treated that way. I don't want to live in a country where the judiciary panders to mob rule, thanks. Who gets to decide that, anyway?