LONDON, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A motorist whose car and trailer careened off a highway onto a main rail line and triggered a two-train crash that killed 10 people was convicted Thursday in the deaths and faced 10 years in prison.
The prosecution said construction contractor Gary Hart was exhausted after spending five hours on the telephone the night before, talking to a woman he had met on the Internet eight days earlier and that he fell asleep at the wheel of his Land Rover on the M62 superhighway before dawn on Feb. 28.
The vehicle, towing a trailer loaded with another car, plunged down an embankment into the path of an express train. Hart managed to scramble to safety but the train smashed into his car at 117 mph, derailed and collided with a freight train traveling in the opposite direction and carrying 1,600 tons of coal.
The two trains and the Land Rover "converged like the titanic with the iceberg" to cause the crash, killing six passengers aboard the express and four crewmen on the two trains, the court heard. Another 76 people were taken to hospitals with injuries.
After a trial that lasted 12 days, the jury took 12 hours to find Hart guilty on 10 charges of causing death by dangerous driving. Hart's knees buckled and he fought back tears as the foreman read the verdicts.
The judge, Mr. Justice MacKay, told Hart, "You do not need me to tell you that you stand in peril of going to prison, and going to prison for a substantial period," when he passes sentence in January after reading medical reports.
"My mind is not closed to alternatives," the judge added, "but in effect it is inevitable in a case of this enormity and magnitude." The maximum sentence is 10 years.
Hart pleaded innocent and denied he had fallen asleep at the wheel. But police said he told them he had had only 45 minutes to an hour's sleep in the 24 hours before the crash.
Five of those hours, officers said, were spent by Hart talking on the phone to Kristeen Panter, who had answered a personal advertisement he had placed on the Internet.
