Sheffield Crown Court date set for Askern Boxing Day horror crash driver

Ricky Joe Hepworth, of Newmarche Drive, Askern, has been charged with a series of offences after a car ploughed into a group of four pedestrians on Sutton Road in Askern, near Doncaster, at around 11pm.

Hepworth appeared at Doncaster Magistrates’ for a preliminarily hearing yesterday.

He will next appear at Sheffield Crown Court on Monday, January 25 2016. Hepworth has been remanded in custody.

The police charges accuse him of being uninsured and unlicensed and of failing to stop at the scene of the collision on Boxing Day night.

Hepworth has been charged with three counts of death by dangerous driving, three counts of aggravated vehicle taking, three counts of causing a death while driving uninsured and unlicensed, causing serious injury by dangerous driving and failing to stop at the scene of a collision.

Hepworth is accused of being the driver of a blue Volvo S60 that hit the four pedestrians in a collision on Sutton Road at the junction with Manor Way in Askern.

Three of the pedestrians, two 54-year-old women and a 48-year-old man, died as a result of their injuries.

The fourth pedestrian, a 57-year-old man, suffered what police describe as ‘life-threatening injuries’ in the collision.

He remains in hospital in a critical condition.

The families of those involved are being supported by specialist officers, with the victims of the collision yet to be formally named by police.

But they have been named locally as husband and wife Andy and Fay Tomlinson and friend Mandy Deere, whose husband John is understood to be the person in hospital.