A distraught motorist rang a friend after hitting a pedestrian who later died, saying: “I’ve run someone over. I don’t know what to do.”
Messages sent by Susan Strong to her pal were read to a jury along with moving eyewitness accounts of a tragic collision in Penrith on October 14, 2019.
Strong, 49, is on trial at Carlisle Crown Court. She denies causing 77-year-old Kathleen Boddy’s death by careless driving. Mrs Boddy suffered injuries — from which she died four days later — in the daytime incident at the junction of Penrith’s Victoria and Southend roads.
Strong was heading south, away from the town centre, just before noon. Drving a white Alfa Romeo, Strong moved into a filter lane intending to turn right and slowed for red traffic lights. As they turned green she passed through.
CCTV footage from nearby Penrith Leisure Centre played to jurors captured the moment Strong’s car struck Mrs Boddy, who had entered the pedestrian crossing on Victoria Road from the driver’s right.
Several eyewitnesses described seeing Mrs Boddy thrown into the air, calling the emergency services and rushing to help.
Retired nurse Mary Kirkpatrick, passenger in her husband’s car, didn’t see the impact but recalled exclaiming: “Oh my goodness, a lady has just been knocked down.”
Mrs Kirkpatrick put Mrs Boddy into the recovery position, asked for blankets and placed her jacket under her head.
From her home only 20ft away, Marilyn Strong watched the Alfa Romeo drive around the corner before colliding with Mrs Boddy who, she said, was “about a quarter of the way” across the road.
“I said out loud ‘bloody hell, she has knocked her over and her handbag is on the floor’,” she said in a statement. “I was just in shock as to what I had just seen.”
Others saw Strong in the aftermath, describing her as distressed, visibly shook up and extremely hysterical.
One recalled the driver saying: “Oh my god. What have I done?”
Gillian Todd, in a statement, spoke of planning to meet Strong, her friend of 20 years, who texted her just on way home from town several minutes before the collision.
In a call from Strong, of Pearson Court, Penrith, received at 11.42am, read: “I’ve run someone over. I don’t know what to do.”
Ms Todd was on the scene within minutes and found her friend hysterical. “She appeared to be in a bad way,” she later stated. “She is a very close friend of mine. I’ve never seen her so upset.”
Jurors heard that, following the incident, changes had been made to the pedestrian lights’ set-up at that particular junction. It was felt they had the potential to be confusing and misleading to those on foot.
But neither a police investigator and a defence expert were in a position to say whether Mrs Boddy took any notice of the lights, nor whether they had any influence.
The trial continues.
