00:00A drunk driver who deliberately rammed a vehicle off the road at 60 miles an hour,
00:05killing four-year-old Peter Maughan, has been found not guilty of murder.
00:09Owen and Patrick Maughan have today been convicted of causing the death of four-year-old Peter Maughan
00:14and seriously injuring his father, Lovell.
00:17For reasons we may never know, Owen deliberately rammed the vehicle off the road
00:21before he and Patrick fled the scene, showing no regard for the devastation they had left behind.
00:26The jury agreed this was a deliberate act and the passenger, Patrick,
00:31intentionally encouraged his son to drive this way.
00:34Both men must now face the consequences of their actions.
00:37Owen Maughan had already accepted responsibility of the child's manslaughter
00:41following the high-speed collision on New Barn Road in South Fleet on 1st June last year.
00:47But after more than 17 hours of deliberation, a jury at Maidstone Crown Court
00:52cleared the 27-year-old of murder, accepting that he did not intend to cause serious harm.
00:59His father, 54-year-old Patrick Maughan, who was in the passenger seat at the time of the crash,
01:04was also cleared of murder.
01:06However, he was found guilty of Peter's manslaughter
01:09and of causing grievous bodily harm to the boy's father.
01:12The court heard father and son had been drinking heavily for hours
01:16before pursuing the family's Ford Ranger along the A2.
01:20Persecutors said the pair were in a fury before Owen Maughan used his vehicle as a weapon,
01:25ramming the truck and causing it to roll several times.
01:29Four-year-old Peter, who'd been sitting in the rear, was thrown from the vehicle
01:33and died from what were described as severe and unsurvivable injuries.
01:37His father, Lovell Maughan, was also ejected from the vehicle
01:42and suffered life-changing injuries, leaving him unlikely to ever walk again.
01:47The jury heard that in the moments before the collision,
01:49a phone call captured Owen Maughan saying,
01:52I'm going to ram them.
01:53But in evidence, he told jurors he only intended to nudge the vehicle
01:58and denied meaning to cause catastrophic harm.
02:01After the crash, the pair drove away from the scene
02:04before abandoning their damaged vehicle several miles away.
02:08Both were arrested within days.
02:11Judge Oliver Saxby, KC, told the defendants they now face
02:14lengthily prison sentences.
02:16They will be sentenced at a later date.
02:19Kristen Hawthorne, KMTV
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