A couple who fled the scene of an M61 crash that saw a schoolgirl thrown from her family car and killed will not have their prison sentences increased.
Hannah Jones was driving her boyfriend's Vauxhall Corsa when she lost control and collided with a Nissan Qashqai on the M61 in July 2019. Schoolgirl Sana Patel, aged 12, was subsequently thrown from the family car and suffered fatal injuries. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
And as she lay dying, Jones and her boyfriend Safeer Iqbal called a taxi to take them back to West Yorkshire. During a trial at Preston Crown Court, it emerged the couple had been at a party on the night of the collision, LancsLive reports.
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Iqbal had been drinking so Jones offered to drive his car home even though she was not insured on the vehicle. Other motorists on the M61 described the Corsa being driven erratically at speeds of up to 90mph shortly before the crash, near Chorley.
For months, the pair tried to say Iqbal was the driver rather than Jones. Sana, from Blackburn, was not wearing a seatbelt at the time she was thrown from the vehicle.
Jones was convicted of causing Sana's death by careless driving, and both defendants were convicted of perverting the course of justice after it emerged they lied about who was responsible during the investigation into the collision.
In March 2023, Jones, of Bankfield Court in Mirfield, Yorkshire, was jailed for 18 months and banned from driving for two years. Iqbal, of Lees Holm in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, was jailed for eight months and banned from driving for 12 months.
The case was referred to the Attorney General to be considered under the unduly lenient sentence scheme. If the case had been accepted it would have been referred to the Court of Appeal to determine whether the sentence imposed should be increased.
However a spokesperson from the Attorney General’s Office said: “The Solicitor General was deeply saddened by this case and wishes to express his sympathies to the family of Sana Patel. After careful consideration the Solicitor General has concluded that this case cannot properly be referred to the Court of Appeal.
"A referral under the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme to the Court of Appeal can only be made if a sentence is not just lenient but unduly so, such that the sentencing judge made a gross error or imposed a sentence outside the range of sentences reasonably available in the circumstances of the offence. The threshold is a high one, and the test was not met in this case.”
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