A lorry driver has been cleared of causing the death of an 18-year-old woman in a crash between his vehicle and a coach taking a group of 20 women to a hen party.
Kevin Ollerhead, 45, from St Helens, Merseyside, was found not guilty of causing the death of Bethany Jones by dangerous driving. Jones was travelling to the hen party in Liverpool in April last year when the coach was hit on the M62 in West Yorkshire by an articulated vehicle driven by Ollerhead.
She died after suffering multiple injuries. All of the other passengers on the coach, who were from the Pontefract area, were injured, some severely.
The jury of eight women and four men took just two hours to find Ollerhead not guilty at Leeds crown court. He was also cleared of an alternative charge of causing death by careless driving.
The coach driver, James Johnson, 64, from Wyke, Bradford, pleaded guilty to causing Jones’s death by dangerous driving at an earlier hearing. He will be sentenced on 14 November.
Gasps could be heard from the public gallery as the jury foreman announced the unanimous not guilty verdicts.
Family members and friends of Jones sobbed as Judge Guy Kearl QC thanked the jury.
The trial heard that the collision happened on 26 April after the 24-seater coach suffered mechanical problems and came to a “near standstill”.
The coach had left South Elmsall, near Pontefract, at 11.06am to travel to Liverpool for a hen do ahead of the wedding of Stefanie Firth.
The passengers on the bus very quickly became aware of signs of mechanical failure, including a smell of burning, and asked Johnson to stop the vehicle.
Johnson did stop the coach, which had a badly burnt-out clutch, and made a brief examination but said he could not find a problem and continued the journey. The speed of the coach gradually slowed to a crawl until it was travelling at just 5.5mph in the nearside lane of the M62, just after junction 32, near Pontefract.
Ollerhead, who was driving his lorry at 52mph, crashed into the back of the bus, shunting it 50 yards along the road and into a crash barrier, leaving it lying on its side across an exit sliproad.
He told the court he was a professional driver and there was nothing he could have done to avoid the accident.