Attorney General considering sentence of Jonathan Eaves

Jonathan Eaves, 25, was jailed for four years and eight months after pleading guilty to causing Saskia Bet’s death by dangerous driving in January.

Now a member of the public has referred the case to the Attorney General under the scheme whereby the law officer can appeal a sentence to the Court of Appeal if he considers it to be too lenient.

Judge Simon Hickey said of Saskia: “She was very special person loved by her family, missed by many, in short an extraordinary young woman taken from us far too soon.”

He heard personal statements from her family about her and their grief.

York Crown Court heard she was 27 years old and driving to her work at Hob Moor Oaks Academy before dawn on January 26, 2021, when Eaves swerved his bus violently into the path of her car on the A19 south of Easingwold.

Soheil Khan, prosecuting, said she had no chance to avoid the crash and died of her injuries.

Eaves, from Preston, had not seen a cyclist ahead of him until he was almost on top of him, and as he tried to avoid him, drove suddenly into the other lane where Saskia was driving south. He clipped the cyclist’s handbar and crashed into Saskia’s car.

The cyclist was wearing reflective clothing, had a flashing red light on his bike and was visible for at least 30 seconds before the incident, the barrister said.

Jonathan Eaves (Image: North Yorkshire Police)

Eaves had previously been involved in a series of lesser collisions while driving his bus and had been caught on camera driving with both hands off the wheel as he waved a bottle around wearing headphones and apparently listening to music, opening a can of drink or a box of sweets or something similar as he drove, and watching himself doing things with one hand including pressing the touchscreen of his smart watch, the court heard.

“The common sense inference is clear,” the judge told Eaves. “You mustn’t have been keeping a proper lookout. Something must have been distracting you. I don’t know what – perhaps only you know that.”

Eaves, of Moss Nook Drive, Preston, was driving a bus for Reliant Motor Services at the time and was sacked by them following the crash on January 26, 2021.

As well as the jail term he was banned from driving for six years and four months.

Defence solicitor advocate Graham Parkin said Eaves had made a series of small errors, such as not stopping in a layby shortly before the crash scene to clean his windscreen from spray thrown up by a passing lorry, which together meant he had been driving dangerously. There had also been a period when the cyclist’s rear light may not have been visible.

Eaves had not intended to injure anyone that morning, said Mr Parkin.