Anthony Webster

Gillian Smith and Anthony Webster died when a man crashed head on into the car they were passengers in on the A429 outside Corston.

A 33-year-old man was tried for causing their death by dangerous driving but acquitted.

It was heard that he might have been having an epileptic fit at the time.

He was said to have been travelling at about 80mph on the wrong-side of the road in his Audi A5 when he hit a Honda Jazz car, in which Gillian Smith and Anthony Webster were passengers, near Corston on 16 September 2019.

The man had been seen in CCTV to leave the Dyson offices near Malmesbury at 4.14pm in his car, driving at the speed limit and to wait at temporary traffic lights in Corston.

At 4.23pm, as cars were stopped, waiting to turn across the road, his car hit the back of a Range Rover Sport and then went off at speed. Witnesses said they saw it travelling southbound on the A429 towards the M4 and pull onto the wrong side of the road to pass a vehicle turning right and then cross some double white lines, missing another oncoming car by inches, and then strike the Honda Jazz car.

When people went to his car, they said that they thought that he was drunk, although he later tested negative for drink or drugs, and that he was trying to start his car and had no memory of the crash.

When the police arrived he said, ‘I was driving along and the next thing I know I’m being pulled from my car. I don’t remember having an accident’.

He said that he suffered from epilepsy and had seizures at night, but that he was taking medication for the condition and that his epilepsy would not have affected his driving or had an impact on the crash.

However, the prosecution moted that the man had had another crash four months earlier and that he might have experienced a short seizure before he struck the Range Rover, but that he had then made off, taking the conscious decision not to stop, and to have then crashed into the Honda Jazz car.

The prosecution said that the man might have suffered a brief focal seizure that would have lasted seconds immediately prior to the collision with the Range Rover, and emphasized the word ‘might’.

The prosecution noted that after hitting the Range Rover that the man, ‘took the conscious decision not to stop and instead he overtook the Range Rover, was able to narrowly avoid a collision with the vehicle ahead about to turn right and then accelerated away, speeding for approximately 400 yds changing gear as he did so’, before colliding with the Honda Jazz car.

However, the man was cleared of causing death by dangerous driving.