'You and your actions alone have left our family devastated and broken'

Heartbroken family give statement in court as killer driver avoids custodial sentence

- BY PAT HURST

“DISTRACTED” dentist who was told while she was driving that her father was dying and then ploughed through a road junction killing a pensioner has avoided a jail sentence.

Lucinda Collins was on a hands-free call with her mother while behind the wheel of her BMW taking her three-year-old daughter to a play date, Chester Crown Court heard.

Collins, 40, was distracted by news that nothing more could be done for her severely ill father and missed 'stop' signs and that she was approaching a junction.

Travelling at around 40mph she failed even to brake and hit another BMW, pushing it into the path of cyclist, retired builder Roger Dutton, 75, a “much loved” father and grandfather and cycling club member.

Mr Dutton, of Holywell, North Wales, was killed in the collision, at the junction on Brown Heath Road between the villages of Waverton and side. Collins did not brake before the collision and told police at the scene she had simply lost concentration.