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Hart guilty of Selby train crash deaths

Press Association
Thursday 13 December 2001 01:00 GMT
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Builder Gary Hart has been found guilty of causing the deaths of ten people by dangerous driving in the Selby train crash.

Hart was convicted on all ten counts at Leeds Crown Court by a majority of ten to two.

The jury of seven women and five men reached the verdicts on day 12 of the trial after almost 12 hours of deliberation.

They had heard how Hart, 37, of Strubby, Lincs, had spent the night before tha crash on the telephone to a woman he had met over the Internet.

He then drove having had no sleep all night and the prosecution alleged that he fell asleep at the wheel.

Six passengers and four crew died in the crash on February 28 this year when Hart's Land Rover left the M62 motorway and crashed onto the east coast main line, causing an express train to collide with a loaded goods train at high speed.

Hart denied falling asleep at the wheel, claiming he lost control of the car,which was towing a trailer with another vehicle, after hearing a noise in thecar.

Investigators found no trace of any mechanical faults which could have caused him to veer off the motorway and hurtle down an embankment.

Hart claimed he had been "buzzing" the morning of the crash and not tired.

But expert prosecution witnesses claimed he had too little sleep after a night on the phone to Kristeen Panter – a woman he had "met" eight days earlier on the Internet.

The jury heard harrowing tapes of Hart's 999 calls after his car hit the line as the first train approached.

The crash was between a GNER express passenger train and a fully laden coal train near the village of Great Heck, North Yorkshire.

The London–bound express which was derailed and then crashed into the freight train.

The judge told the jury the two trains and the Land Rover "converged like the Titanic with the iceberg" to produce the crash.

Immediately after the verdicts were returned the judge, Mr Justice Mackay asked Edmund Lawson QC, defending: "How do you invite me to proceed from this point on?"

Mr Lawson replied: "My Lord will of course be aware there is a number of factors to be taken into account in assessing the appropriate sentence for the offence of which Mr Hart has just been convicted.

"One of these factors is the effect which this has had upon him."

Mr Lawson told the judge he thought it would be appropriate to request a report from Hart's "medical practitioner and more particularly a psychologist".

Following the verdicts Hart's barrister Mr Edmund Lawson discussed with the

judge the possibility of a pre–sentence report.

Mr Justice Mackay said it was inevitable that Hart would receive a substantial prison term.

"It seems to me at this moment the effect of these verdicts is, and must be, that the sentence of the court will be a sentence of immediate imprisonment of a substantial term and disqualification of a longer term.

"My mind is not closed to an alternative but that is what is in effect inevitable in a case of this enormity and magnitude."

The judge said Hart would be bailed pending reports.

Hart walked into the courtroom to hear the verdicts hand–in–hand with his wife Elaine, who he was estranged from at the time of the crash.

As the guilty verdicts were read out by the jury foreman, Hart held his head in his hands.

He slumped in the dock and stared intently at the floor as his barrister, Mr Lawson made representations to the judge.

It was a gesture mirrored by his wife, who was being supported by well–wishers in the courtroom.

Mrs Hart sat behind some of the people injured in the Great Heck disaster and only a few feet away from the relatives of the 10 people who died in the rail crash.

Hart had been given permission to sit with his defence team rather than look conspicuous alone in the large, glass–fronted dock.

But, as the jury foreman returned the verdict today, the defendant was sat at the back of the large courtroom, separated from his family and well–wishers.

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