Motorist in misted car killed nurse

A MOTORIST has been jailed for killing a nurse on a pedestrian crossing after reaching for a cloth for his misted windscreen.

Winston Hagston, 58, didn’t see mother-oftwo Allyson Pattison, 60, and failed to brake despite the driver behind him beeping his horn in warning, a court was told.

Mrs Pattison, who had worked in Covid wards during the pandemic, was thrown into the air by Hagston’s Dacia Duster, suffering fatal head injuries. A witness said the car was speeding.

Hagston, a butcher, admitted causing death by careless driving in January last year and has now been jailed for ten months, with a driving ban of two years and five months.

He had told another motorist: ‘I didn’t see her crossing the zebra crossing. My windows ... all misted up when I put my heating on.’

He told police: ‘It just shows that you don’t need to be going fast to kill someone. It’s normally along this part of the road that I switch my heater on. I switched it on, the vents opened and there was a puff. My windscreen clouded over.

‘I switched the windscreen wipers on in case it was mist, reached to my right-hand side to get a cloth, which is in the glove compartment next to my leg, to wipe the windscreen on the inside, then, bang, I hit the lady.’

Mrs Pattison was on her way to a bus stop in Hull when she was struck at 7.15am. She was pronounced dead at 7.53am. Tom Gent, mitigating, told Hull Crown Court that Hagston was ‘desperately sorry for his mistakes’, adding: ‘This is something that will haunt him forever.’

Judge Sophie McKone said Mrs Pattison had ‘dedicated herself to her community’ during the pandemic. She added that the pedestrian was ‘clear to be seen’ on a well-lit crossing.