A DELIVERY driver is facing jail after falling asleep at the wheel and killing a mother of four days before Christmas.
Stephen Clarke, 59, had travelled more than 200 miles before losing control and ploughing into the car Farzana Kousar was in on the hard shoulder of the A74(M) motorway near Lockerbie.
He fell asleep at the wheel of a Mercedes Sprinter van, which drifted across the carriageways and killed the 39-year-old from Glasgow. Mrs Kousar was getting out of the passenger door to check the car because the engine was overheating.
She repeatedly said “I’m dying” while lying injured on the road before she lost her life.
Exactly two years on from the tragedy, Clarke, from Wednesbury, West Midlands, pleaded guilty to causing the death of Mrs Kousar by driving dangerously on Monday, December 22, 2014.
The court heard self-employed Clarke was a courier with UK Express Logistics, subcontracted since August that year. Clarke left Coventry at about 1.20am and stopped at Southwaite services at about 5am.
Mrs Kousar was a passenger in a car parked on the hard shoulder, and she had opened the door of the car and was making her way out of the Toyota at about 5.30am.
Just before her car stopped, another lorry driver, Frank Keiller, saw Clarke’s van overtake him then “drift in to the middle lane”, forcing him to brake.
Advocate depute Bruce Erroch said: “The van drifted back out again and then into the hard shoulder.
“Mr Keiller saw Clarke’s van appear to ‘jolt’ and accelerate during these manoeuvres, causing him to think that the driver was asleep.
“Clarke accepts that he was indeed falling asleep at this point of his journey and that he had fallen asleep at the point of collision.”
Clarke’s van veered fully into the hard shoulder and smacked into the Toyota, sending it into a spin before it came to rest in the middle lane.
Immediately after the crash passers-by stopped to help and Craig Usher saw Mrs Kousar lying on the road.
The driver of the car was uninjured and Mrs Kousar was able to tell Mr Usher that she had pain in her back and that she was dying.
She lost consciousness and despite efforts by Mr Usher to save her, paramedics pronounced her dead at 6.11am.
Clarke told those nearby: “Oh God, what have I done? Is she dead? I didn’t see the car.”
He told police he was the driver of the van and said: “I don’t think I was on the hard shoulder. I may have been. I hope not.”
In March this year, during a police interview, he was asked if he had fallen asleep and said: “I hope not.
“I don’t think I did. I’m not going to say I didn’t.”
A post-mortem revealed Mrs Kousar’s cause of death was chest injuries due to the collision.
Defence counsel Matthew Jackson said the working practices of the sub-contracting firm were investigated after a similar fatal crash near the same area took place a month earlier.
He said the investigation into that incident suggested fatigue had been a contributing factor.
Judge Lord Boyd deferred sentence until January 30, 2017 at the High Court in Edinburgh and continued Clarke’s bail.
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