Jurors deliberate in trial of pensioner accused of causing death by careless driving of baby Louis Thorold in Waterbeach

Jurors have begun their deliberations in the trial of the pensioner accused of causing the death by careless driving of five-month-old Louis Thorold, who was in a pram being pushed along the pavement by his mother in Waterbeach.

Shelagh Robertson, 75, was driving home from a shopping trip to Tesco when she turned into the path of an oncoming van on the A10 on January 22 last year, Cambridge Crown Court heard.

The van collided with Robertson’s car, forcing the van onto the pavement where it hit Rachael Thorold and her five-month-old son Louis Thorold, killing him and throwing Mrs Thorold into the air, causing serious injuries.

Robertson, of Stables Yard, Waterbeach, denies causing the infant’s death by careless driving, with her defence team arguing that she is not guilty by reason of insanity as she had undiagnosed dementia at the time.

James Leonard, defending, told the trial it was “obvious” Robertson’s driving “fell below the standard of a reasonable and competent driver”.

But he said that Robertson was “ill-equipped to negotiate” the junction due to her dementia, and she was unaware of this as she was undiagnosed at the time.

Prosecutor David Matthew said in his closing speech: “There’s no doubt here that Shelagh Robertson is suffering from a form of dementia and was suffering from it in January 2021.”

But he raised the question of “where on the slope of dementia Shelagh Robertson was in January 2021”.

“It’s not just a question of whether someone has dementia, it’s a question of how bad is it,” he said.

The judge, Mark Bishop, told jurors that to return a special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity they must be satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, Robertson had dementia at the time and either did not know what she was doing or did not know that what she was doing was wrong.

He said that this “doesn’t include a momentary failure to concentrate”.

The judge told jurors, as he sent them out to begin their deliberations on Thursday: “You are under no pressure of time to reach your decision.”

Earlier in the week, the court heard how Adam Zeman, professor of cognitive behavioural neurology at the University of Exeter, was instructed by defence lawyers to compile a report on Robertson.

He told jurors that the defendant had “dementia caused most probably by Alzheimer’s disease in a slightly atypical presentation”.

Prof Zeman said Robertson would have been at “high risk of becoming confused at that junction and one possible outcome of the confusion would be to look the wrong way”.

“It’s a difficult junction for the average healthy driver,” he said.

Prof Zeman said that “some forms of dementia are diagnosed relatively late as the features are rather subtle”.

“The time her problems were getting more severe coincided with the pandemic so there would have been fewer opportunities for face-to-face contact than there normally would be,” he said.

The expert witness added that Robertson had “few close relatives” and her husband was “severely unwell”, which was significant as “it’s often the spouses who bring you along” to a dementia clinic.

Jurors were shown an MRI scan of the defendant’s brain, and Prof Zeman said it showed “shrinkage” of a part of the brain associated with memory and language.

He said that if he saw someone at his dementia clinic with the “difficulties” he saw in Robertson he would “advise them immediately not to drive”.

Prof Zeman said that language difficulties observed “more subtly” in Robertson by her friend Angela Brown in around 2016 to 2017 may have represented the beginnings of her dementia.

Former teacher Ms Brown, who said she has known Robertson since around 2010, told the court that she was last driven by the defendant in around the winter of 2018.

She recalled the occasion in 2018 when she was a passenger in Robertson’s car, and Robertson approached a junction on the A10 and “seemed uncertain of how to proceed”.

“I began to feel unsafe and wondered if something was the matter,” she said.

Ms Brown said she also noticed that Robertson had begun to have difficulty with sewing and knitting.

Robertson was not called to give evidence.