Driver heard victim being dragged under car, court hears

Warning: This article contains distressing content

A passenger in a car that dragged a head teacher to his death for more than a mile has told a murder trial the driver could hear the victim from inside the vehicle after hitting him.

Gabrielle Debotte said she "still had visions" of the moment her cousin, Simon Richardson, hit 56-year-old cyclist Michael Mullins at 18:07 BST on 20 April before driving away.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Ms Debotte told Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court that Richardson spent the night after the crash "laughing and joking" and drinking alcohol.

Richardson, 35, denies murder and an alternative count of manslaughter.

The jury heard Mr Mullins was trapped under the vehicle and dragged 2.2km (1.3 miles).

The married father-of-two was found injured by a motorcyclist who had followed a trail of blood from near the crash site on Paddock Lane to Wet Gate Lane. Mr Mullins died a short time later.

Phil Barnes KC, prosecuting, asked Ms Debotte about her "state of mind" after the crash.

She became emotional as she told jurors she was left "shocked" and "scared" by the crash.

"I had never seen anything like that in my life. I still have visions of it," she said.

The 27-year-old said Richardson had been driving at speed before hitting Mr Mullins and that she had told him to slow down.

Asked how he responded, she said: "He smirked and said: 'I'm a professional driver'".

Ms Debotte said Richardson had agreed to drive her from her home in Altrincham to collect weight-loss medication from a beauty salon in Lymm.

As the Volvo approached the junction of Dunham Road and Paddock Lane in Warburton, Trafford, she noticed a cyclist to the right of the car.

Realising the vehicle was travelling too fast to stop, she shouted "bike" three times, she said.

Mr Mullins, who was cycling home from work at Stretford Grammar School to his home in Northwich, was hit side-on and his bicycle was thrown to the roadside.

Asked if she saw what happened to the cyclist, Ms Debotte replied: "At first he hit him. From what I remember he went underneath the car."

She said Richardson stopped for a "split second" and that she told him: "We need to get out," because "it was the right thing to do".

However, the car sped away along Paddock Lane towards Cheshire.

Asked how Richardson was driving after the collision, Ms Debotte said: "It was erratic. He was swerving the wheel."

Asked why she thought he was swerving, she replied: "We could hear a noise underneath the car, and he heard that noise. That's when he started moving the wheel."

She said that after hearing sounds which suggested someone was in pain, Richardson told her: "He's under the car."

Data from Mr Mullins's Apple Watch and Ms Debotte's mobile phone showed the Volvo appeared to stop for about 90 seconds on Wet Gate Lane in Lymm, Cheshire, shortly after the collision.

Ms Debotte said Richardson got out of the car, walked around the front of the vehicle and crouched down on the passenger side.

She said she could hear Richardson "struggling", as if he was trying to lift something, although she said she could not see what he was doing.

The jury heard Richardson then returned to the driver's seat, briefly turned the steering wheel and then made a second attempt to pull Mr Mullins from beneath the vehicle.

However, she said that after appearing to fail a second time, Richardson got back into the car and drove along Wet Gate Lane towards Wet Gate Farm.

Ms Debotte was shown CCTV footage from the farm which appeared to show the car swerving from side to side before reversing and heading back the way it had come.

"He was driving erratically," she said.

"It was like he was trying to move forwards and backwards as well, and that was when Mr Mullins was released from the car."

She told the jury that when the car reversed, she saw a man lying at the side of the road and briefly moving his arm.

Asked what was happening inside the car at that point, she said: "I was screaming. It's hard to describe but he [Richardson] was crying as well. He was panicking."

The jury heard the Volvo then stopped at a petrol station in Lymm, where Richardson refuelled, before travelling to a nearby clinic where Ms Debotte collected her medication.

She was dropped off at her home in Altrincham at about 18:45 BST.

The jury heard Richardson later returned in a silver Ford Transit van with a man called Daniel Richards.

CCTV footage showed the pair "coming and going" from Ms Debotte's home several times during the night and into the early hours of 21 April.

Phil Barnes KC asked about a note later recovered from her mobile phone, which she said related to what Richards had told her to say to police.

Ms Debotte said Richardson and Richards were "laughing and joking" in her house that night.

She said Richardson, who had recently been released from prison, would often turn up at her home and had a key to the back door.

Asked what was happening inside the house, she said: "I was upstairs most of the time.

"I would come down and they would be drinking my dad's alcohol, playing music and treating it as their house."

Ms Debotte said she left home to walk to work at 09:26 BST.

Later that morning, she became upset and asked her manager to call police because she had been involved in a collision.

Her manager drove her to a police station, where she was initially arrested before later giving a witness statement.

She said she then told officers "everything".

Ms Debotte is due to be cross-examined by Jaime Hamilton KC, defending.

The trial continues.

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