BMW motorist guilty of dangerous driving that killed teenager on Leeds 'mad mile' road
Jury finds that driver who was travelling at 80mph on 50mph stretch was to blame for young woman’s tragic death.
A driver who smashed into another car while travelling well above the speed limit and killing a young woman has been found guilty of causing her death by dangerous driving.
Georgia Bendelow was the front-seat passenger of a Seat struck by the powerful BMW M3 being driven by Thomas Sherwood on the A63 near Garforth almost four years ago.
Despite accepting the speed he was driving, Sherwood denied it was dangerous, attempting to avoid responsibility by telling a jury it was “wrong time, wrong place”.
He stood trial at Leeds Crown Court this week having been charged with causing death by dangerous driving and two counts of causing serious injury through dangerous driving.
The jury found him guilty on all three offences by a majority verdict.
Sherwood, of Cartmel Drive, Halton, will now be sentenced on May 21. He was remanded into custody.
Judge Andrews Stubbs KC told him it would “plainly be a substantial custodial sentence”.
The crash happened shortly after 6.30pm on August 31, 2022 on the A63 at Swillington Common. The road is known locally as the “mad mile” due to the volume of drivers that speed along the stretch, although speed cameras have now been installed.
The red Seat Mii had pulled over at the side of the dual carriageway on the A63 at Swillington Common, facing the direction of Garforth, to pick up 18-year-old Georgia and her boyfriend.
The pair exited a house next to the road and got into the stationary Seat being driven by Georgia’s mother.
The Seat then began to pull away, first into the inside lane, then the outside lane.
Footage from CCTV cameras on nearby houses was played to the court, showing the devastating moment the speeding BMW then smashed into the back of the Seat.
It sent the smaller car into a spin and then through a gap in the central reservation and onto the opposite carriageway.
It came to a stop and luckily was not struck by any traffic coming the other way.
An air ambulance was called to airlift Georgia to hospital. Tragically, she could not be saved and died two days later from catastrophic head injuries.
Her mother and boyfriend were also hospitalised, with her boyfriend requiring surgery on a fractured pelvis.
Sherwood was arrested at the scene.
It was heard that the 36-year-old had borrowed the high-performance car from a friend and thought he was insured, but wasn’t. He previously admitted causing the death by being uninsured.
Forensic collision investigators agreed that the BMW was travelling an average of 80mph on that stretch of road, and had applied the brakes a moment before impact, striking the Seat at 70mph.
One witness, who gave evidence, was in a car alongside Sherwood on the roundabout prior to exiting onto the A63.
He described the M3 as “sounding like a jet engine” with a “whooshing sound” as it accelerated away from his own vehicle.
Another said Sherwood was weaving in and out of traffic, undertaking and overtaking before accelerating “hard” on the A63.
Sherwood said he had been at the Lord Gascoigne pub in Garforth that evening, had drunk one-and-a-half pints of lager and then borrowed the friend’s BMW to pick another friend and then return to the pub for a birthday party.
There was no suggestion he was over the drink-drive limit, and he thought he was insured on the car.
Giving evidence, Sherwood claimed he could not have avoided the collision, despite collision experts calculating that he would have had time to avoid it, had he been adhering to the 50mph limit.
He denied he was racing and said he “could not have predicted” the Seat moving into the outside lane.