Teacher killed as BMW driver ploughed into her car near Stokesley

Simon Allport had drunk a couple of pints before getting behind the wheel of his car and tearing through Middlesbrough and the surrounding countryside.

The 43-year-old was spotted driving at excessive speed by a number of other road users before he collided head-on with Amie Linton’s Nissan Qashqai on the outskirts of Stokesley.

Teesside Crown Court heard how the force of the impact resulted in Miss Linton’s car being flung through a hedge and into a field leaving debris all over the road.

Soheil Khan, prosecuting, said Allport had been drinking with his friend in the Master Cooper pub in Acklam on July 4, 2020, before taking his BMW M4 coupe out for a spin.

Amie Linton. Picture: NORTON PRIMARY ACADEMY

Witnesses spotted Allport travelling at excessive speed on several occasions in the area with one saying he was ‘flying’ when he past her in the minutes leading up to the fatal impact.

“Her vehicle was struck with such force that it left the carriageway, passed through a hedge and came to a rest in a field,” said Mr Khan.

“The M4 was at least a metre over the white line at the point of the collision and the evidence clearly suggests it was being driven erratically earlier and right up to the collision.”

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Mr Khan said two doctors who stopped at the scene gave the mother-of-one treatment at the scene before the emergency services arrived but were unsuccessful in their desperate efforts to save her life.

The fatal collision happened on Tanton Road, near Tanton Bridge in Stokesley as the school teacher made her way from work in Stockton to her home in Great Ayton.

Miss Linton’s family paid tribute to the 33-year-old mother-of-one in powerful victim impact statements.

Her father Richard read out his own statement and one on behalf of Amie’s partner, he said: “We will never forget the worst day of our lives, family and friends had to pick up personal items of Amie’s out of the field days after.

“Live was good for Amie, she had just had promotion and found her forever home not having any idea that forever would be too short.”

The 43-year-old construction manager, of Pennal Grove in Ingleby Barwick, pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving whilst over the drink drive limit.

Simon Allport. Picture: NORTH YORKSHIRE POLICE

Eleanor Fry, in mitigation, said her client had expressed genuine remorse for his actions and said he was highly thought of by friends, family, and colleagues.

Judge Paul Watson QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, sentenced Allport to five years and seven months for killing the young mother while he was one and a half times over the drink drive limit.

“The facts of this case make for chilling reading,” he said. “It maybe the case that it is not possible to say just how fast you were driving at the time of the collision with Amie’s vehicle but it is clear that you had been driving, over a period of time, both at excessive speed and aggressively.

“At the particular point where the collision occurred you had moved you car, despite it being a clear bend with limited vision, to cross the white line into the path of Amie’s car.”

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