Man buys speedboat “to pull women”......

[Gameface]

Catching someone found guilty of causing someones death and who then sticks 2 fingers up at the family of the deceased, the police and judiciary by doing a runner, should be something of a priority IMO.

[Condi]

Didnt one of the newspapers say he had links to abroad and was assumed to have already fled the country?

[Gameface]

Oh in that case, the Maddie McCann cops will be all over it.

[Condi]

There is this interesting line at the bottom of the Sky News article about him

Sky News said:

Shepherd is also wanted by police for failing to attend court over another unrelated matter.

[CoolHands]

Knob-end, imagine being on the run the rest of your life, and knowing that, eventually, you will be caught anyway.

[Ayahuasca]

Lord Marylebone said:

There is probably only a moderate chance of him getting caught

There is an infinitesimally small chance of him not being caught. Staying off-gird in today's Britain is next to impossible.

[Sa Calobra]

He'd only serve three years why is he running unless the other matter is serious..

[lyndhurst25]

I wonder what the outcome would have been if the bloke had been killed, and the women in control of the boat at the time of the accident had survived? Would she have been similarly charged?

[IrateNinja]

lyndhurst25 said:

I wonder what the outcome would have been if the bloke had been killed, and the women in control of the boat at the time of the accident had survived? Would she have been similarly charged?

Possibly, but she wouldn't have received the same sentence.

[Eric Mc]

Sa Calobra said:

He'd only serve three years why is he running unless the other matter is serious..

See above - he's wanted for other matters.

So, he has a bit of a record.

[essayer]

lyndhurst25 said:

I wonder what the outcome would have been if the bloke had been killed, and the women in control of the boat at the time of the accident had survived? Would she have been similarly charged?

The way I see it - he's the 'skipper' of the vessel and responsible for his passengers - so doing something risky (fast, nighttime) means he's on the hook for anything bad which could conceivably have been avoided.

Yes it's a tatty boat on an inland river, but he's still the one in charge

[poo at Paul's]

Gameface said:

Oh in that case, the Maddie McCann cops will be all over it.

/………….once the Uk heatwave stops, of course!!

[oyster]

hooblah said:

keith333 said:

At the very least he should have made sure they were wearing lifejackets.

Well no. There are no rules about this like seatbelts in cars.

You don't sound particularly objective on this thread.

Friend of yours?

[oyster]

fblm said:

Regardless of the guy being a bit of a dick, I'm really struggling to see how it's manslaughter and not just a tragic drunken accident. st happens and with hindsight almost all accidents are easily avoidable that doesn't make them manslaughter.

Took an inexperienced drunk 'sailor' out on a boat.
Whilst drunk
In the dark
On a fast-flowing tidal river
With submerged obstructions
In winter
Without protective equipment
Let that inexperienced 'sailor' control the boat in the above conditions


Then.....
Failed to rescue the victim

It might well have been an accident as it was likely to have been unintentional. But you can't argue that he wasn't negligent.

[Condi]

oyster said:

Took an inexperienced drunk 'sailor' out on a boat.
Whilst drunk
In the dark
On a fast-flowing tidal river
With submerged obstructions
In winter
Without protective equipment
Let that inexperienced 'sailor' control the boat in the above conditions


Then.....
Failed to rescue the victim

It might well have been an accident as it was likely to have been unintentional. But you can't argue that he wasn't negligent.

Had he turned up to court, been very very sorry, not had 2 previous 'ticking's off' from the river police, helped the victim on the night of the crash and generally appeared a decent bloke he probably wouldn't have had any custodial sentence at all.

The fact he jumped bail, has shown no remorse, and also come across like a dick is probably as much a factor in his sentence as anything wrong with the boat.

[Europa1]

oyster said:

Took an inexperienced drunk 'sailor' out on a boat.
Whilst drunk
In the dark
On a fast-flowing tidal river
With submerged obstructions
In winter
Without protective equipment
Let that inexperienced 'sailor' control the boat in the above conditions


Then.....
Failed to rescue the victim

It might well have been an accident as it was likely to have been unintentional. But you can't argue that he wasn't negligent.

Indeed:

The test for manslaughter by gross negligence involves the following stages:

a) the existence of a duty of care to the deceased;
b) a breach of that duty of care which;
c) causes (or significantly contributes) to the death of the victim; and
d) the breach should be characterised as gross negligence, and therefore a crime.

[anonymous-user]

oyster said:

fblm said:

Regardless of the guy being a bit of a dick, I'm really struggling to see how it's manslaughter and not just a tragic drunken accident. st happens and with hindsight almost all accidents are easily avoidable that doesn't make them manslaughter.

Took an inexperienced drunk 'sailor' out on a boat.
Whilst drunk
In the dark
On a fast-flowing tidal river
With submerged obstructions
In winter
Without protective equipment
Let that inexperienced 'sailor' control the boat in the above conditions


Then.....
Failed to rescue the victim

It might well have been an accident as it was likely to have been unintentional. But you can't argue that he wasn't negligent.

Well he was found guilty so I accept he met the criteria of manslaughter and negligence. To me it seems very harsh. It's the kind of sentence an ex-boxer might get when he smashes someones skull in, in a bar fight. She was a willing participant in a relatively high risk activity (although I honestly don't think it's as crazy as people are making out); he had no qualifications or competency based license to qualify him as 'captain'; anyone can buy and frequently do use a boat incompetently; there's nothing to suggest he knew it was any more dangerous than she did; the fact he'd apparently done it many times before would suggest he didn't realise the danger. There are no end of ways people can die doing silly things when drunk. It's unfortunate for this guy that they managed to find one of the ways in which he owed her a duty of care due to a quirk of owning a vessel. If he was negligent then, IMO, as a willing equally unqualified adult participant so was she, which makes, again IMO, getting the same jail term as someone who kills with violence seem over the top. Fortunately my unqualified opinion counts for nothing and he probably deserves everything he gets given his subsequent behavior.

[PurpleTurtle]

I was just catching up on my copy of Saturday's Grauniad over lunch and this caught my eye.....

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/27/ma...

"The court heard how Shepherd got married shortly after the incident and has a two-year-old child. The marriage has since broken down."

The incident happend in December 2015. If today he has a 2yo kid, they must have been born in at least July 2016.

Thus their mother would have been pregnant with the kid in at least November 2015 i.e. before the incident, when he was spinning up and down the Thames pissed with random girls from dating sites.

He strikes me as a bit of a dick. Actually, make that a lot of a dick.

[julian64]

oyster said:

Took an inexperienced drunk 'sailor' out on a boat.
Whilst drunk
In the dark
On a fast-flowing tidal river
With submerged obstructions
In winter
Without protective equipment
Let that inexperienced 'sailor' control the boat in the above conditions


Then.....
Failed to rescue the victim

It might well have been an accident as it was likely to have been unintentional. But you can't argue that he wasn't negligent.

I have problems with this. Unless you have ever tried to swim in the Thames on a cold day you will not be aware that trying to rescue someone is almost impossible. Unless you hold onto something you will be swept away, and the water is so dirty you have no chance of seeing anything in it, let alone they idea he was going to duck dive and swim her to safety. I did try to swim in the Thames in January and I can tell you without a rope I would have been in serious jeopardy. The idea that he 'failed to rescue the victim' is therefore moot.

Secondly I think he is right when trying to argue he had no duty of care to the victim, or at least no where near the duty of care of a captain on a commercial vessel. Trying to call him the captain of a dingy is like saying he could have married her with his authority while on the boat. Its just daft. His experience with the boat counts for very little.

I have no problem with his fate for the way he's subsequently acted but I thin the judge would be very hard pressed to apply any of the principles here to other offences, and it suggests to me the judge has very little experience of anything boat related

[Red Devil]

Couldn't face the dead girl's family from the dock, eh. A pathetic excuse of a man.
Judges tend not to like defendants going on the lam: basically showing contempt. I wonder how much extra tariff he got just for that.

In today's world, unless you have already set up a false identity and/or have a shedload of cash readily available, you pretty soon leave an electronic fingerprint.
He'll leave a trace. I rather doubt he has the same level of friends/connections as John Bingham did.