A Toyota driver who smashed into a cyclist then left him for dead was a convicted sex offender out of prison on licence, the Oxford Mail can now report.
Retired headteacher Edward Hinchliffe, now 77, was handed an indefinite sentence for public protection – a type of life sentence – in 2008, reportedly after a decorator found a cache of indecent images in a cupboard.
He was ordered to spend eight months behind bars by the Swansea judge.
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But has since served years more in custody, both because he has been convicted of further offences and because he can only be released from prison on the say-so of the Parole Board.
Hinchliffe was on his way to Didcot railway station en route to London when he crashed into triathlete Simon Chesher on the A417 Reading Road near Wantage on August 2, 2020.
He claimed to have panicked and kept driving after his ‘fight or flight’ mechanism kicked-in. Mr Chesher, 38, died in hospital from his head injuries a month after the crash, having never regained consciousness.
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The pensioner, who accepted his driving was careless, was found guilty by a jury at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday afternoon (August 31) of causing death by dangerous driving and driving dangerously after the crash.
Jailing him for five-and-a-half years, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “Any humanity that you had evaporated and you calmly went on your way to London as if nothing had happened. Dreadful, dreadful behaviour.
“Any decent person would have immediately stopped and offered what assistance they could. You did not.”
Having struck Mr Chesher, Hinchliffe carried on his journey to Didcot despite heavy damage to his windscreen.
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Other motorists said it looked like the car window had been ‘shot’, with one detailing how the defendant’s Toyota went through a red light and repeatedly struck the kerb in Didcot.
He parked near Didcot Parkway station and got the train to Paddington. He was arrested from his friend’s house in North London later that afternoon.
The driver was taken to Wood Green police station and answered no comment to questions put to him, which he said he did on the advice of his solicitor.
From the witness box this week, Hinchliffe asked to be allowed to say some words to demonstrate ‘the sort of person I am’.
“I am deeply affected by what happened and I can’t even begin to think of the upset and the grief that was caused by the accident to the family behind me,” he told the court. He did not, however, say the word ‘sorry’.
In a victim personal statement read to the court by prosecutor Robert Brown after the jury’s verdicts were read out, Mr Chesher’s mother said the family’s life had been damaged ‘beyond repair’ and their faith in humanity ‘severely dented’.
They were ‘incredibly proud’ of their son and ‘miss him terribly’.
Pamela Stokell, who was riding with Mr Chesher on the day of the crash, said she had felt a persistent ‘sense of guilt’ and as a result of the crash had developed a fear of driving.
Paying tribute to the victim, Judge Gledhill told a public gallery packed with the cyclist’s family and friends: “Mr Chesher was a decent, hardworking, family man and when he went out on this Sunday morning for a ride with his friend.
“That should have been a pleasant day, his great hobby being cycling, and it was a perfect day to go out on his bike with his friend. It ended in utter tragedy.
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“I can’t do anything by way of sentence to bring him back, much as I’d dearly like to assist. I can’t do anything to help any of you.
“All I hope is that the trial that has just taken place and the sentence I am about to impose will close this dreadful chapter in all of your lives and you will be able to begin to move on.”
Hinchliffe, of Ormond Road, Wantage, was jailed for five years and six months, and banned from driving for seven years and nine months.
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