Ben Rogers died in May 2022 at the hands of speeding driver Owain Hammett-George.
Hammett-George, then 17 and now 19, was sentenced to six years in prison last week after he killed Ben and Kaitlyn Davies, 19, and caused serious injuries to then 17 and now 19-year-old Casey Thomas leaving her in intensive care for nearly a month. He crashed his car at Bishopston, Swansea, on the way to the Gower shortly after 11pm on May 31, 2022, while driving his brand new 21-grand Alfa Romeo at at least 70mph in the 30mph zone while “showing off”, Swansea Crown Court heard reports WalesOnline.
He’d picked Ben up from his flat in Swansea before picking up Casey and Kaitlyn and heading to McDonald’s before driving to Gower. and heading to McDonald’s before driving to Gower. In the early hours of the night on May 2022 Carla King received a knock on the door at around 3.20am, and the police delivered the news that her son had been involved in a collision and it was fatal.
Ben Rogers, 19, was killed in a crash (PA)
Kaitlyn Davies was also killed in the crash (WALES NEWS SERVICE)She said: “I asked them how Ben was again and again because it wasn’t computing. It’s not something you can describe, I can’t even work out how I got dressed."
Carla said the next day she visited her son at the morgue to identify his body. In her statement which she read out in court while looking at Hammett-George and his parents, she described her son as “unrecognisable” the last time she saw him. She said: “I wanted to make sure I looked at his parents just as much as I did him.”
Obsessed mum accused neighbour of running brothel and threatened to kill her
Family's of Ben Rogers and Kaitlyn Davies who both 19, were killed instantly, while Casey Thomas, then aged 17, sustained life-changing injuries during the incident (John Myers)Hammett-George had previously pleaded not guilty to charges brought against him but in February he changed his plea and admitted two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and one count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Prosecution barrister Ian Wright KC told the court the fatal crash happened due to the "grossly excessive speeds" being driven by Hammett-George.
He lost control of the car and hit a grass bank causing the vehicle to flip into the air and rotate before colliding with a concrete pillar. An investigation into the crash discovered that Hammett-George was not wearing a seatbelt at the time of the collision but had placed the belt into its lock and sat on it in order to stop the car's warning sound and light being activated.
All three passengers were thrown from the car and officers for South Wales Police called the aftermath the “worst collision damage they’d ever witnessed”. Carla says she has been having support for PTSD symptoms but talking about her son she said: “You often only find out after someone has died what an impact they had on people’s lives, and that was the case with Ben.”
Familys of Ben Rogers and Kaitlyn Davies both 19, were killed instantly, while Casey Thomas, then aged 17, sustained life-changing injuries during the incident Owain Hammett-George was 17 when he drove at speeds of up to 78mph on a 30mph road (John Myers)When it came to building a memorial for Ben, the family knew just what to do. Caral said: “He absolutely loved it at the beach ever since he was a child. He started going with his friends and they’d often be here all day, a lovely place to grow up and he loved swimming and surfing as well.”
Throughout court proceedings it emerged how Hammett-George had exchanged text messages with his relatives who were worried about his speeding. The texts threatened taking his car from him. But Hammett-George had been given the expensive fast car and had been “overindulged” by his parents despite being “immature”, Judge Geraint Walters said.
Looking at Hammett-George in the dock, he said: “You drove at grossly excessive speeds to the point you lost control of the vehicle and immediately effectively extinguished the lives of two of those in the car. I have no shadow of a doubt you purposefully took the decision to exceed the speed limit. It wasn’t inexperience that caused you to speed, it was your disregard.”
Days after passing his test in February 2022 the court heard how Hammett-George received a speeding fine. On that occasion his father, Dewi George, covered up for him, pretending he was driving the vehicle. He later admitted to perverting the course of justice by taking his son’s points and was jailed for four months in July 2023.
“I’m angry about what led to what happened,” Carla explained. “If you feel your child shouldn’t have a car or a car like that then you need to act. What we saw in evidence were empty threats. ‘That’s it, you’re having a black box’, ‘I hope you have another speeding fine’, they were all empty threats. There were countless text messages back and forth about his speed and yet ultimately it wasn’t taken seriously enough and it cost two young people their lives.”
The victims’ families have appealed Hammett-George's sentence of six years in a youth detention unit with an eight-year driving ban. Had Hammett-George been an adult at the time of the offence Judge Walters told him he would have sentenced him to the maximum term of 14 years. If the offence had been committed a month later, due to a change in the law around maximum sentences for causing death by dangerous driving from June 2022, Judge Walters could have sentenced Hammett-George to a life sentence had he been an adult.
According to statistics from the RAC male drivers aged between 17 to 24 are four times more likely to be killed or seriously injured in a road traffic collision than drivers aged 25 or over. Another part of the national research found 60% of all serious or fatal collisions involving young male drivers happen on rural roads.
'My son's a drug lord - he's threatened to kill me but I still love him'
Ben's sister Ashleigh Rogers recalled the scene “like a film set and something which you wouldn’t think real”. “I went down there at about 5am, it hadn’t hit me until I saw it, and even then it didn’t really. It was only being there and seeing where the engine was and piecing it together we began to realise how horrendous it was.”
Ashleigh and her family were disappointed with the length of the sentence. She said: “There was a discount for his age, then a discount for his guilty plea, but we never thought for a minute he’d get below 10 years. What does the length of the sentence say? Would a young man reading the news articles be put off speeding? There’s no justice in it at all.”
Memorial bench dedicated to Ben (John Myers)When he died his family didn’t think twice about where they’d most like to mark Ben’s memory. “He absolutely loved it at the beach ever since he was a child,” Ben’s mother Carla King recalled from Ben's memorial bench opposite Swansea Rugby Club. On Ben's bench is the slogan "Be More Ben", which his family and friends have taken on to highlight the person Ben was.
She said: "One of his friends said it and it stuck, I really liked it. To me it means: 'Try and be more Ben because Ben never judged anyone.' I still ask myself in many situations: 'What would Ben do?' I try and reflect on decisions we make with that thought in my mind now."
Carla who is receiving support for PTSD, said her family will now campaign for motoring and education changes in Ben’s memory. Among the changes they want to see are a gradual licence where a new driver can’t carry more than one passenger under 25 for the first 12 months, mandatory black boxes for new drivers for two years after passing their test, and a speed awareness course to sit alongside the theory test.
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
