A drunk driver who killed a 75-year-old man by pushing him over in an act of road rage has been jailed for 10 years and nine months.
James Gill, 39, fractured Neil Robinson’s skull in an unprovoked and random attack after accusing him of “walking on the wrong side of the road” on 16 December last year. He also threatened to set fire to another motorist’s car in what the judge described as a five-hour “catalogue of carnage”.
Passing sentence, Judge Stuart Rafferty QC said: “Mr Robinson was a 75-year-old, frail, slender man. He was doing nothing more than trying to cross the road.”
Road rage was an aggravating feature in the killing, the judge said, telling Gill: “It is not an exaggeration to describe you that day as being a lethal weapon.”
Nottingham crown court was told Robinson died in hospital six days after being pushed over by Gill, who was on his lunch break from an electrician’s training course. The court heard that Gill, from Doncaster, was on bail at the time of the killing, having punched two police officers outside a bar in Sheffield five days earlier.
The prosecutor, Sarah Knight, told the court that Robinson was on foot crossing a road in Chilwell, Nottingham, when a witnesses saw Gill leave his vehicle and use both hands to push Robinson hard in the chest, causing him to fall backwards. Afterwards, Gill stole a bottle of vodka from a nearby supermarket and returned to the training course, where he was asked to leave for being “angry and disruptive”.
He was next seen in the Toton area of Nottinghamshire, where he threw a bottle out of his car window, smashing it against a wall. After a female driver asked him to pick up his litter, the court was told Gill responded: “I know littering is wrong but so is arson and I am more than happy to set fire to your car.”
A 68-year-old man, who also remonstrated with Gill, was then dragged out of his car and repeatedly punched in the face.
Gill admitted manslaughter, four counts of assaulting an emergency worker, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, drink-driving, criminal damage, two shoplifting offences and making off without payment.
In a victim impact statement to the court, Robinson’s son, Benjamin, said: “I still find his death senseless. I literally can’t make sense of the fact he is no longer here.”
He recalled visiting his father’s flat on Christmas Eve, two days after he died, and seeing a pile of presents waiting to be opened. “The apartment was as if he had just stepped out for a coffee, which is exactly what he had done,” he said. “All of the signs of a life being lived just waiting for him to return and pick up where he left off.”
Judge Rafferty told Gill: “I hope that, like the rest of us listening to this, you are appalled by the person that you were. Through your own abuse of alcohol and drugs you had turned yourself into a menace.”
Noting that one of Gill’s fingers was cut off to “enforce” a drug debt nine months before Robinson’s death, the judge added: “Even that did not stop you from drinking and taking drugs.”
Gill must serve two-thirds of his sentence in custody, and was banned from driving for a period of five years after his eventual release.
