A pizza delivery driver who was speeding at nearly 60mph when she mounted a pavement and killed a man celebrating his apprenticeship has been spared jail.
Rosie Hanson, 21, was driving a VW Golf along Marine Parade in Sheerness, Kent, at around 6.40pm on January 17 2024 when she hit Ryan Phillips, 27, and his girlfriend Sophie Rowe. The couple were “chatting and laughing” while walking on the pavement on their way to a restaurant to celebrate Mr Phillips passing his apprenticeship as an IT technician.
“Rosie Hanson, 21, spared jail after killing Ryan Phillips while speeding at 60mph on a pizza delivery in Sheerness.”
Prosecutor Tom Nicholson told Maidstone Crown Court that Ms Rowe was hit in her legs before she ran to Mr Phillips and saw blood coming from his mouth. A post-mortem examination found he had suffered a “completely unsurviveable head injury from the outset” after striking the car’s windshield.
In a 999 call, Hanson said she thought a cat had run into the road, “causing her to swerve up onto the curb”. But data from her iPhone showed she was travelling at between 54 and 68mph in a 40mph zone in the moments before she lost control. Her account of seeing an animal was “difficult to confirm or negate”, Nicholson said.
“At the speed Ms Hanson was travelling, combined with the abrupt steering response, led to the vehicle becoming unstable, and resulted in her overreacting to the situation, and instigating a clockwise rotation, crossing the opposing lane, mounting the pavement and colliding with Mr Phillips and Ms Rowe,” he told the court.
Sentencing her on Thursday, Judge Julian Smith found Hanson, then 19, had been driving at something like 60mph. “The reason for tragic loss is failure in Rosie Hanson’s driving,” he said. “Speeding to get a job done to deliver pizzas is stupid, but it is not of itself malicious… it should not happen.”
Hanson, who worked for her father in an admin job and also delivered pizzas on an ad hoc basis, received a 16-month prison term suspended for two years for causing death by careless driving. She was also given a concurrent nine-month sentence for driving without insurance, as her cover did not include business or professional use.
The judge said the sentence was “no measure” of a man’s life but of her culpability, and adjusted it to reflect her young age. “There is to my mind a realistic prospect of rehabilitation. I accept she is a low risk of re-offending and is in no way a danger,” he added. He acknowledged the impact of Mr Phillips’ death is “extraordinary and ongoing”.