Shelagh Robertson, 75, was driving home from a shopping trip to Tesco when she swerved into the path of an oncoming lorry on the A10 at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire on January 22 last year, Cambridge Crown Court heard. The lorry collided with Robertson’s car, forcing the lorry onto the pavement where it struck Rachael Thorold and her five-month-old son Louis Thorold, killing baby Louis and throwing Mrs Thorold into the air, seriously injuring her. Robertson, of Stables Yard, Waterbeach, denied causing the infant’s death by careless driving, with her defense team pleading not guilty by reason of insanity as she had undiagnosed dementia at the time. Five-month-old Louis Thorold with his mother Rachael Thorold (Cambridgeshire Police/ PA) (Average PA) James Leonard, defending, said in his closing speech that it was “obvious” that Robertson’s driving “fell below the standard of a reasonable and competent driver”. But he said Robertson was ill-equipped to negotiate the cross-examination because of her dementia, and she did not know this as she had not been diagnosed at the time. “He’s trying to be safe, but he just doesn’t have the mind to be safe,” Mr Leonard said. Prosecutor David Matthews 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. Chris and Rachael Thorold, parents of baby Louis, arrive at an earlier hearing at Cambridge Crown Court (Joe Giddens/ PA) (PA wire) Mr Mathew said Robertson had no previous convictions. 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”. Professor Zeman said Robertson would have been at “a high risk of confusion at this junction and a possible result of the confusion would have been to look in the wrong direction”. The expert witness added that Robertson had “few close relatives” and her husband was “severely unwell”, which was important as “it is often the spouses who bring you together” for a dementia diagnosis.
