Pedestrian who shouted at cyclist to ‘get off the f***ing pavement’ has manslaughter conviction overturned
8 May 2024, 12:51 | Updated: 8 May 2024, 14:14
A pedestrian who shouted and waved her arm at a cyclist, causing her to fall into the path of an oncoming car, has had her manslaughter conviction overturned at the Court of Appeal.
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Auriol Grey was seen on CCTV shouting at retired midwife Celia Ward to "get off the f****** pavement" in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, causing her to fall into the road.
Grandmother Mrs Ward, 77, of Wyton, Cambridgeshire, died after she was struck by a car in the incident in October 2020.
Ms Grey, who has cerebral palsy and partial blindness, denied manslaughter but was found guilty after a retrial and was jailed for three years in March 2023.
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But at the end of a hearing on Wednesday, three judges at the Court of Appeal in London overturned her conviction.
Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Mrs Justice Yip and Mrs Justice Farbey, said: "In our judgment, the prosecution case was insufficient event to be left to the jury."
She continued: "In all the circumstances, we have no hesitation in concluding that the appellant's conviction for manslaughter is unsafe."
Mrs Ward’s widower, retired RAF pilot David Ward, said in a statement read during the trial last year by prosecutor Simon Spence KC that the ‘clip of Celia’s last moments will haunt me forever’.
"Rarely a day goes by without thinking of her and our happy life together, but I can so easily burst into tears, as I have on so many occasions," he said.
The driver of the car which collided with Mrs Ward, Carla Money, who was with her two-year-old daughter at the time, said that her life was ‘turned upside down.'
