The sooner cars are legally considered a weapon, the better.
Deliberately try and hurt someone with a car? Attempted murder. Kill someone with a car through negligence or bad driving? Manslaughter.
Mixed feelings on this. If they have internally reviewed and found that there was not sufficient evidence of the medical diagnosis or that the driver should not have been behind the wheel due to prior diagnosis then fine. The fact they’re asking for witnesses to come forward seems odd if this is the case. You worry that they’ve been pressured into reopening a sensitive case but hopefully they have solid grounds for doing so.
Reading between the lines here, it looks like police didn’t really do an investigation and just accepted the word of the driver. Families of the victims don’t accept this, so go away and do their own work and discover something that forces the police to do their job.
I was there the day after. It was clear that this massive car hadn’t spun or sped out of control – it had just chugged along from the junction, through a fence and into a wall, killing two kids along the way. There was nothing to indicate it had been barrelling along at speed. How, precisely, it happened, I don’t know. But the events afterward have convinced me of a few things:
* we are far, *far* too quick to accept someone’s defence of ‘I had a medical episode’. If this case is anything to go by, you can excuse yourself from any behaviour in a car by having an episode despite no previous history and the police and the public will say “could happen to anyone”.
* cars are far too big. This vehicle did not travel at speed, yet it knocked down a fence and put a hole in school wall. The aggravating factor here was the size and weight of a vehicle designed, ostensibly, for rugged terrains, not quiet Wimbledon Common lanes.
* Combine the two points together and you get massive blocks of steel with a very high probability of erratic behaviour being made available to anyone, and the deaths of children under their wheels is considered a risk we must take to facilitate driving and people’s convenience. But those kids weren’t driving. They were having a little game outside a school. They don’t come under the driving statistics, but they’ll come under the fatality statistics.
Five people die on Britain’s roads every day. We are okay with this.
Edit: Also, shout out to the All England Lawn Tennis Club turning up to lay in a wreath *in the same fucking car*.
Someone explain to me why people who live in London would need to drive one of those giant cars?
The UK’s roads and spaces, and London’s in particular are not suited for these monstrosities.
Government should be taxing them to high heaven.
Was the driver tested for drink and drug use at the time?
In this article the police said this: *“We believe there were people in the local area who have not been spoken to by police and remain unidentified. I would ask those individuals to please contact us.*
*“Our main priority is to ensure the lines of inquiry identified by the review are progressed.”*
Here is an article from when the Police announced they would not be taking any further action against the driver.
*Helen Lowe, who was head of The Study, an all-girls preparatory school in south-west London, revealed she has yet to speak to police about the Land Rover which crashed into the school’s playground one year ago and killed Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau.*
There you go Met, I found one and I’m not even going to charge you for the Private Investigators fee for it!
The car looked like a fucking tank in the pictures. A pity this sorry incident didn’t spark a wider conversation about our perverse love of needlessly huge vehicles.
I remember being smashed with downvotes on this sub when it was previously posted about no charges. I said we should have the opportunity to examine her defence in court and was met with “the families aren’t entitled to her private medical history” lmao.
I always thought the medical issue excuse was likely to be right because why else would someone drive a car that distance through a fence and in to a wall.
I wonder if this is because there is now evidence that the driver knew they had some kind of issue and knew they shouldn’t have been driving.
Having lived there during this period I am delighted this has happened.
Clearly a case of the wealthy getting away with murder (well, manslaughter).
No one needs a tank like this in the city.
Sick of these fucking cars/tanks.
This should have been an easy case: did the driver know they were likely to have a seizure.
If yes, straight to jail.
If no, then no further action (besides berating people who drive huge cars).
One look at their medical records was all that was needed.
A ‘gold Land Rover Defender’? Should be imprisoned just for driving round in that.
The killer, Claire Freemantle, aged 48 was wealthy enough to hire tremendously capable legal teams to scrub her presence of the internet. She could hire Mark Jones – who advertised himself writing
“Mark Jones is utterly exceptional – the man to see if you’re in trouble – and has an incredible gift for making things go away.’”
Shame on the Met for taking everything she said at face value. Might be helpful to remind ourselves that police do not have to arrest or re-arrest anyone to re-open an investigation. But they chose to.
Why do we allow 2.5-3tn vehicles to be driven around by people with a basic driving license? Weight limits for cars please.
You are 10x more likely to cause death every time your vehicle weight doubles. This is because heavier cars are harder to stop than lighter ones when tires and load distribution are considered. So if you choose a Range Rover to drive around London’s tight roads (with 5 empty seats behind you) over say a Fiat Panda you are massively increasing your chances of killing someone all skills being equal.
The car she was in weighs as much as my 6 cylinder AWD Estate car, my Classic car, and my 700cc motorbike combined.
Its ridiculous to drive a car like that in London for the school run.
Had she been in a sensible car, no medical episode would have resulted in the death of the children.
Reminder the driver has people scrubbing the internet (including Reddit threads) of all traces of her identity… not exactly a good look.
In a way I’m glad she’s hurt people as wealthy as she is, as they are able to make sure this case isn’t going away.
I won’t elaborate on this further but the 2nd child who died is a distant relative of mine, and I attended her funeral as my family and I are close to Wimbledon. Here’s hoping for a better outcome for her parents (and the parents of the other child who died) from this new investigation.
19 comments
The sooner cars are legally considered a weapon, the better.
Deliberately try and hurt someone with a car? Attempted murder. Kill someone with a car through negligence or bad driving? Manslaughter.
Mixed feelings on this. If they have internally reviewed and found that there was not sufficient evidence of the medical diagnosis or that the driver should not have been behind the wheel due to prior diagnosis then fine. The fact they’re asking for witnesses to come forward seems odd if this is the case. You worry that they’ve been pressured into reopening a sensitive case but hopefully they have solid grounds for doing so.
Reading between the lines here, it looks like police didn’t really do an investigation and just accepted the word of the driver. Families of the victims don’t accept this, so go away and do their own work and discover something that forces the police to do their job.
I was there the day after. It was clear that this massive car hadn’t spun or sped out of control – it had just chugged along from the junction, through a fence and into a wall, killing two kids along the way. There was nothing to indicate it had been barrelling along at speed. How, precisely, it happened, I don’t know. But the events afterward have convinced me of a few things:
* we are far, *far* too quick to accept someone’s defence of ‘I had a medical episode’. If this case is anything to go by, you can excuse yourself from any behaviour in a car by having an episode despite no previous history and the police and the public will say “could happen to anyone”.
* cars are far too big. This vehicle did not travel at speed, yet it knocked down a fence and put a hole in school wall. The aggravating factor here was the size and weight of a vehicle designed, ostensibly, for rugged terrains, not quiet Wimbledon Common lanes.
* Combine the two points together and you get massive blocks of steel with a very high probability of erratic behaviour being made available to anyone, and the deaths of children under their wheels is considered a risk we must take to facilitate driving and people’s convenience. But those kids weren’t driving. They were having a little game outside a school. They don’t come under the driving statistics, but they’ll come under the fatality statistics.
Five people die on Britain’s roads every day. We are okay with this.
Edit: Also, shout out to the All England Lawn Tennis Club turning up to lay in a wreath *in the same fucking car*.
Someone explain to me why people who live in London would need to drive one of those giant cars?
The UK’s roads and spaces, and London’s in particular are not suited for these monstrosities.
Government should be taxing them to high heaven.
Was the driver tested for drink and drug use at the time?
In this article the police said this: *“We believe there were people in the local area who have not been spoken to by police and remain unidentified. I would ask those individuals to please contact us.*
*“Our main priority is to ensure the lines of inquiry identified by the review are progressed.”*
Here is an article from when the Police announced they would not be taking any further action against the driver.
[Met never spoke to me about fatal crash, says Wimbledon prep school headmistress](https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/met-never-spoke-to-me-about-fatal-crash-says-wimbledon-prep-school-headmistress/ar-BB1pyXBE)
*The former headmistress of a Wimbledon school where* [*two young pupils were killed in a fatal car crash*](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/04/wimbledon-study-prep-school-crash-claire-freemantle-police/) *has said the Metropolitan Police never spoke to her about the incident.*
*Helen Lowe, who was head of The Study, an all-girls preparatory school in south-west London, revealed she has yet to speak to police about the Land Rover which crashed into the school’s playground one year ago and killed Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau.*
There you go Met, I found one and I’m not even going to charge you for the Private Investigators fee for it!
The car looked like a fucking tank in the pictures. A pity this sorry incident didn’t spark a wider conversation about our perverse love of needlessly huge vehicles.
I remember being smashed with downvotes on this sub when it was previously posted about no charges. I said we should have the opportunity to examine her defence in court and was met with “the families aren’t entitled to her private medical history” lmao.
I always thought the medical issue excuse was likely to be right because why else would someone drive a car that distance through a fence and in to a wall.
I wonder if this is because there is now evidence that the driver knew they had some kind of issue and knew they shouldn’t have been driving.
Having lived there during this period I am delighted this has happened.
Clearly a case of the wealthy getting away with murder (well, manslaughter).
No one needs a tank like this in the city.
Sick of these fucking cars/tanks.
This should have been an easy case: did the driver know they were likely to have a seizure.
If yes, straight to jail.
If no, then no further action (besides berating people who drive huge cars).
One look at their medical records was all that was needed.
A ‘gold Land Rover Defender’? Should be imprisoned just for driving round in that.
The killer, Claire Freemantle, aged 48 was wealthy enough to hire tremendously capable legal teams to scrub her presence of the internet. She could hire Mark Jones – who advertised himself writing
“Mark Jones is utterly exceptional – the man to see if you’re in trouble – and has an incredible gift for making things go away.’”
Shame on the Met for taking everything she said at face value. Might be helpful to remind ourselves that police do not have to arrest or re-arrest anyone to re-open an investigation. But they chose to.
Why do we allow 2.5-3tn vehicles to be driven around by people with a basic driving license? Weight limits for cars please.
You are 10x more likely to cause death every time your vehicle weight doubles. This is because heavier cars are harder to stop than lighter ones when tires and load distribution are considered. So if you choose a Range Rover to drive around London’s tight roads (with 5 empty seats behind you) over say a Fiat Panda you are massively increasing your chances of killing someone all skills being equal.
The car she was in weighs as much as my 6 cylinder AWD Estate car, my Classic car, and my 700cc motorbike combined.
Its ridiculous to drive a car like that in London for the school run.
Had she been in a sensible car, no medical episode would have resulted in the death of the children.
Reminder the driver has people scrubbing the internet (including Reddit threads) of all traces of her identity… not exactly a good look.
In a way I’m glad she’s hurt people as wealthy as she is, as they are able to make sure this case isn’t going away.
I won’t elaborate on this further but the 2nd child who died is a distant relative of mine, and I attended her funeral as my family and I are close to Wimbledon. Here’s hoping for a better outcome for her parents (and the parents of the other child who died) from this new investigation.
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