A headteacher was mowed down and dragged for more than a mile to his death after becoming trapped underneath a car, a murder trial has heard. Michael Mullins, 56, was cycling home from Stretford Grammar School in Manchester on April 20 when he was struck by a Volvo XC90 driven by Simon Richardson, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court was told.
Richardson, 35, is said to have driven straight through give way markers at a junction and collided with Mr Mullins in Altrincham, Greater Manchester, the court heard.
Prosecution opens case
Opening the case, Phil Barnes KC told jurors: “A number of eyewitnesses saw what happened. They did what any decent person, any of us, would have done having just seen a collision. They stopped their cars, they got out to see if everybody was OK. They called the emergency services. But not Simon Richardson.
“Simon Richardson did not stop to see if the cyclist he had just ploughed into was OK. Simon Richardson, knowing he was to blame for what had just happened, turned his head, put his foot down and – at times travelling at double the speed limit – he fled the scene.
“The bike was obvious to the people who stopped to help. They could see it lying in the road. But what they could not find, despite searching the hedgerows and the fields by the road, was the cyclist who had been riding it. Michael Mullins was nowhere to be seen. Why? Because he was trapped beneath Simon Richardson’s car.
“This was murder, say the prosecution, because the evidence will show you that for a significant proportion of that journey Simon Richardson knew that Michael Mullins was there beneath the wheels of his car – trapped and injured but alive. He knew that what he was doing would kill Michael Mullins or at the very least cause him serious injury and yet he drove on anyway.”
Damage and attempts to free victim
Jurors were told that visible damage to Richardson’s Volvo was captured on an ANPR camera as he drove away from the collision – both to the bonnet and to the windscreen almost directly in front of the driver.
Mr Barnes said: “That damage was not there before the collision. It is beyond doubt, we say, that damage was caused by Michael Mullins being thrown up on to the bonnet of the Volvo when the defendant hit him. Putting it bluntly, there is no way on earth that Simon Richardson could not have known that he had just hit Michael Mullins and that he was very likely to be hurt.”
Later in the journey Richardson stopped his Volvo in a quiet country lane, got out of the driver’s seat and attempted in vain to pull Mr Mullins out from under the car, the court heard. The defendant then drove on and was seen “veering sharply and deliberately from side to side” before his car mounted a grass verge, the court was told.
Crushed to death
Mr Barnes said it was the Crown’s case that Richardson then drove over his victim at least once before he was finally dislodged and then left the scene. He said: “Michael Mullins was crushed to death beneath the wheels of this defendant’s car, and his death was made quicker by the fact that he had been dragged against the surface of the road by Simon Richardson for more than 2km.”
Several witnesses to the collision followed “a trail of blood” and discovered Mr Mullins laid out on the grass verge. Mr Barnes said: “The first man to get to him found him to be still breathing and barely alive. His breath would give out within the next few moments of that man arriving to help him.”
Medics attended and Mr Mullins, from Northwich, Cheshire, was pronounced dead at the roadside at 6.50pm – 40 minutes after the collision more than a mile and a third away.
Richardson was arrested the following day after he was said to have driven dangerously at speed in residential streets in Failsworth, Oldham, in a van as he was pursued by police, the court heard. Richardson denies murder. He has also pleaded not guilty to an alternative count of manslaughter and to an allegation of dangerous driving. The trial continues.
