A driver who killed an eight-month-old baby in a crash outside a hospital has had her sentence reduced.
Bridget Curtis, 71, was jailed for four years in January, after she pleaded guilty to causing the death of Mabli Cariad Hall by dangerous driving.
Mabli was struck by a white BMW outside Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, on Wednesday 21 January 2023.
She was airlifted to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff and was then moved to the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, where she died of her injuries four days later.
Mabli’s father, Rob Hall, said in a victim impact statement that life without his daughter had been “horrendous” and he did not know how the family could “recover from such trauma”.
Her mother, Gwen Hall, described Mabli as her “best friend, [her] shadow, [her] second skin” and added that the day her daughter died was the day her life “irreversibly changed for the worse”.
Speaking after January’s sentencing hearing, Mabli’s grandfather Paul Sambrook said the “nightmarish chapter” had come to an end and urged people to “take care every time you sit behind the wheel of [their] car”.
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‘Manifestly excessive’
At the Court of Appeal on Tuesday, Curtis’s barrister said the sentence should be reduced.
Three senior judges ruled that Curtis’s sentence was “manifestly excessive” and reduced it from four years to three.
Mr Justice Butcher, sitting with Lord Justice Bean and Judge Richard Marks KC, said it was a “truly tragic case”.
“We have read the very moving victim personal statements of Mabli’s parents, expressing their grief at the death of their beloved baby,” he added.
“No one could fail to sympathise with them for the appalling loss that they have sustained.”
Curtis, who attended the appeal hearing via video link from HMP Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire sat in a wheelchair throughout.
‘Law-abiding life’
Swansea Crown Court previously heard Mabli and her family were visiting her grandmother, who was receiving end-of-life care at the time of the crash.
Mabli’s father had just put her back into her pushchair on a grassed area under some trees opposite the hospital’s entrance “when he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle”.
The court heard Curtis had given her daughter a lift to the hospital for an appointment and had stopped the car outside the main entrance, with the engine running.
Her daughter was unable to see her handbag in the back of the car and the defendant “turned around from her seat to look into the back”.
“The defendant had failed to switch off the vehicle and had failed to place the car, which was an automatic-geared vehicle, into a parked setting,” Craig Jones said, prosecuting.
In four and a half seconds, the vehicle reached a top speed of 29 miles per hour and travelled a distance of 28 metres before the collision.
In mitigation, John Dye said the defendant had “led a blameless, law-abiding life”.
‘Tragic case’
Mr Dye, representing Curtis again at the Court of Appeal, said it was a “tragic case” but that the issue was “one of pedal confusion”.
He said it was “clearly dangerous driving”, but that in terms of culpability, the four seconds were “more akin to…a lapse of concentration”.
Craig Jones made no oral submissions to the court on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Mr Justice Butcher added that Curtis “did not intend to cause any harm” but that her driving was “well over the threshold of dangerousness”.
He added that the court accepted Curtis’s remorse to be “genuine” and said it was “inattention and confusion as to which pedal she was pressing that caused this tragedy”.
