A woman has been sentenced to four years in prison for causing the death of an eight-month-old baby by dangerous driving.
Bridget Curtis, 71, had previously pleaded guilty to causing the death of Mabli Cariad Hall outside Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire.
Mabli was airlifted to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff after she was hit by a white BMW on Wednesday 21 June 2023.
She was later moved to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children where she died four days later.
‘Entirely tragic’
Swansea Crown Court heard Mabli and her family were visiting her grandmother, who was receiving end-of-life care at the hospital, when the crash happened.
Prosecuting, Craig Jones said it was an “entirely tragic” case.
He said Mabli was “very nearly nine months” when she died, a day when the weather conditions were “fine and dry”.
Mabli was with her father in a grassed area under some trees opposite the hospital’s entrance.
“Mr Hall put Mabli back into her pushchair and was adjusting the straps when he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle,” Mr Jones said.
The court heard that Curtis had given her daughter a lift to the hospital for an appointment and had stopped the car outside the main entrance.
After she was dropped off, her daughter went to retrieve her handbag from the back of the car but was “unable to see the bag and tapped the window to attract her mother’s attention”.
“With the engine running, [the defendant] turned around from her seat to look in the back,” he said.
“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.”
In a period of four and a half seconds, the vehicle reached a top speed of 29 miles per hour and travelled a distance of 28 metres.
‘So beautiful’
In a victim impact statement, Rob Hall told the court he remembered Mabli “smiling at [him], making her cute noises”.
He said the “violent revving, screeching tyres” of the car was something he saw and heard “daily”.
Mr Hall said that after Mabli’s death, his family “were numb, felt helpless and destroyed”.
“This struggle continues to this day, and will always be there. Life from then until now has been horrendous. It’s been so hard to live this life,” he said.
“It’s exhausting, we’re drained, and I just don’t know how we recover from such trauma.”
Mabli’s mother, Gwen Hall, also read a victim impact statement from the witness box, telling the court the day Mabli died was the day her life “irreversibly changed for the worse”.
“She had said ‘Mamma’ for the first time only the day before,” she said.
Ms Hall said the family was “heartbroken”, but that the word “does not do justice to how broken and destroyed we are as a family”.
“Everyone needs to remember that Mabli was eight months old, she was so bright, so beautiful and so full of love and life. She was the apple of all our eye,” Ms Hall added.
“She was my best friend, my shadow, my second skin.”
‘Devastation of their lives’
In mitigation, Mr John Dye said the defendant had “led a blameless, law-abiding life”.
He said she had shown “extremely genuine remorse” and had written a letter to Mabli’s family.
The court heard Curtis had “ongoing mobility issues” and had caring responsibilities for her adult daughter.
Handing down his sentence of four years in prison, Judge Geraint Walters said “loving parents, siblings and a wider extended family suffered the devastation of their lives”.
“That is because that day, they suffered that which each parent dreads, the loss of a much-cherished child, then just eight months old,” he said.
“Her life was taken from her senselessly, and indeed needlessly, as a result of your actions.”
The judge said the case was aggravated by the fact that others were struck by the vehicle, namely Mabli’s father and uncle.
As well as the custodial sentence, Curtis was also disqualified from driving for eight years and would have to undergo a driving test before she could re-apply for a licence.
Addressing the media outside court, Mabli’s grandfather, Paul Sambrook, thanked “everyone who [had] been part of the process to secure justice for Mabli Cariad”.
“We’ve waited over 18 months for this day and finally this nightmarish chapter has come to an end,” he said.
“We’ll go home now and start to live our lives without Mabli. She was the sunshine who lit up our lives in so many ways, but now we have to focus on helping the other children of the family to cope with the loss and find a new way forward.
“If there is anything to learn from the pain and bereavement, this is what it is. Take care every time you sit behind the wheel of your car, think carefully about your own safety as well as the safety of others.”
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Iwan Jenkins from CPS Wales told Sky News that nothing could change “the tragic events of that day”.
“Although the criminal case has concluded, our thoughts remain with Mabli’s family over their heart-breaking loss and with everybody who received injuries on that day,” he added.
