Building contractor Gary Hart (37) is to receive a substantial prison sentence following his conviction yesterday on ten counts of causing death by dangerous driving relating to the Selby train crash.
On February 28th, Hart, described by police as "a mobile catastrophe waiting to happen," caused the death of ten people when he fell asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover. He had had virtually no sleep the night before because he had spent most of the evening talking to a woman he had met through the Internet and he got up at dawn to drive from Lincolnshire to his job in Greater Manchester.
His car left the M62 motorway near Selby in North Yorkshire and plunged down an embankment and onto train tracks before being hit by a southbound, Great North-Eastern Railway express train. The train was then deflected into the path of a northbound coal train whose driver was killed in the crash.
It took the jury at Leeds Crown Court nearly 12 hours to return a majority 10-2 guilty verdict on the ten counts of death by dangerous driving. Hart was released on bail and will be sentenced next month pending medical and psychiatric reports. The trial judge, Mr Justice Mackay, told him the inevitable effect of a case of such "enormity and magnitude" would be a substantial prison sentence.
Speaking outside the court, one of the officers who led the investigation into the crash, Det Supt Peter McKay, of North Yorkshire Police, said Hart was convicted on "the clearest" of evidence.
"He could have avoided these deaths, he did not. He alone was responsible," he said.