Shelagh Robertson, 75, was driving home from a shopping trip to Tesco when she swerved into the path of a lorry on the A10 at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire on January 22 last year, Cambridge Crown Court heard. The van collided with Robertson’s car, forcing the van onto the pavement where it struck Rachael Thorold and her five-month-old son, Louis Thorold, killing Louis and throwing Thorold into the air, seriously injuring her. Judge Mark Bishop told jurors that to return a special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity they must be satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that Robertson was demented at the time and either did not know what she was doing or did not know that what she was doing was error. He said this “does not involve a momentary lapse in concentration”. Jurors found Robertson not guilty by reason of insanity Friday after deliberating for seven hours and three minutes. The defendant, who sat next to her attorney and a family member in the court well, used a listening loop to hear the jury’s foreman read the verdict. Robertson, from Waterbeach, appeared expressionless as the verdict was returned. Louise’s parents, Thorold and her husband, Chris, who were sitting in the public gallery, looked down at the floor, with Thorold shaking his head. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. James Leonard, defending, told the trial it was “obvious” that Robertson’s driving “fell below the standard of a reasonable and competent driver”. However, she said she was ill-equipped to negotiate the crossing due to her dementia and was unaware of this as it was undiagnosed at the time. “He’s trying to be safe, but he just doesn’t have the mind to be safe,” Leonard said. Prosecutor David Mathew said in his closing arguments: “There is no doubt here that Selagh Robertson suffers from a form of dementia and was suffering from it in January 2021.” He said an MRI of Robertson’s brain which showed shrinkage of a part of the brain associated with memory and language, taken in September or October last year, was “strong evidence”. But it raised the question “where on the dementia slope was Shelagh Robertson in January 2021”. “It’s not just a question of whether someone has dementia, it’s a question of how bad it is,” he said. Adam Zeman, professor of cognitive behavioral neurology at the University of Exeter, was instructed by defense lawyers to compile a report on Robertson. He told jurors the defendant had “dementia probably caused by Alzheimer’s disease in a slightly atypical presentation”. Zeman said Robertson would be at “a high risk of confusion at this junction and a possible outcome of the confusion would be to look in the wrong direction”. The expert witness added that Robertson had “few close relatives” and that her husband was “severely unwell”, which was important as “it is often the spouses who bring you together” for a dementia diagnosis.
