A driver who killed a woman and her three dogs while over the drink-drive limit and having taken cocaine has been jailed for six years and eight months.
Olivia Riley, 41, was walking two labradors and a golden retriever puppy in Chelsea, west London, when she was hit by an Audi TT on 14 May 2022.
She was waiting at a traffic island on a pedestrian crossing when she was struck by Laszlo Dancs, a pizza restaurant worker, who was driving at more than three times the 20mph limit before losing control of the car, the Old Bailey heard on Friday.
Suki Dhadda, prosecuting, said Dancs was racing two separate cars beforehand, a BMW and a Mercedes, and was seen on CCTV accelerating away from traffic lights faster than the Mercedes and overtaking it, before he lost control of his car.
Police and paramedics were called to the scene at 6.21am. Riley, from Suffolk, was found dead, while the dogs also died at the scene, police said. Officers spoke to Dancs and they noted that “it was clear alcohol could be smelt”, the prosecution said.
A passenger in the Audi told police that he and Dancs had been drinking and had taken cocaine as it was Dancs’ birthday that day, the court heard. Dancs, 28, who had minor injuries, was found to be almost two-and-a-half times the legal limit for alcohol and drugs. Two bottles of vodka, one of which was empty, and a small bag of cocaine were found in the Audi.
At a previous hearing at the Old Bailey, Dancs, from Acton, west London, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving. He also pleaded guilty to drink and drug-driving, but denied failing to provide a sample of breath when required.
In a statement read to the court, Riley’s father, Stephen, described her as the “brightest light”. Her mother died in childbirth and he brought her up alone before he remarried and had two children, Leonora and Kit, to whom she had been “a mother figure” when his wife died after a cancer diagnosis.
“The accused has left Leonora and Kit with not only no mother but the person who was guiding them with so much love and care throughout. They are devastated and suffering terribly as a result,” he said.
“I have lost someone who was a brightest light in my life for 41 years, and who I will miss and mourn so deeply throughout my final years.”
Jeremy Dein KC, defending, said Dancs, who moved to the UK from Hungary in 2014, had experienced a break-up of a long-term relationship and gone to a nightclub to celebrate his birthday before the collision.
He had no intention of drinking alcohol, Dein said, but drank beer, vodka and took a line of cocaine, “which he maintains was his first experience”, before making the “most monumental mistake imaginable” to drive. He had an “overwhelming sense of guilt”, Dein added.
Judge Simon Medland KC said: “No sentence any court could ever impose should be considered as a measure of Olivia Riley’s life and its tragic, appalling, needless and avoidable end.”
Dancs will have to serve half his prison sentence and was disqualified from driving for five years and four months.
