Kai Nathanial Holder v R

Facts

On 10 August 2019 at around 7pm the appellant, Kai Nathanial Holder, then 17, was riding a stolen motor scooter east along Bedfont Lane in Feltham, West London, a single carriageway residential road with a 20mph limit. His 14-year-old friend, Bradlee O'Dell Alboni, rode pillion. Neither wore a helmet. The appellant looked over his left shoulder and backwards while remarks were exchanged with two young men on the pavement; that, with the speed of the scooter, caused him to lose control, strike the kerb and overturn, both riders being propelled off. The collision was captured on CCTV and it was common ground that the scooter was travelling at between 37 and 44mph immediately beforehand. Bradlee slid along the pavement, struck two poles and a telephone junction box, and died at the scene of head and spinal injuries. At the Central Criminal Court the appellant pleaded guilty at the PTPH to aggravated vehicle taking and causing death by driving whilst uninsured and unlicensed; his offered plea to causing death by careless driving was not acceptable to the prosecution. The defence objected at trial to the prosecution relying on the passenger's lack of a helmet as relevant to the standard of driving; Her Honour Judge Trowler KC rejected that objection. The jury convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, and the appellant appealed against conviction.