00:00I'm at Maidstone Crown Court where a couple from Rochester have just been sentenced to a combined
00:0418 months for a situation which caused the deaths of two people. Here's what happened. So in October
00:112022 a group of friends have been heading back from a night out in Gravesend. They've been
00:15listening to music and having a good time but on the way back one of the members of the group
00:19realised they'd lost their phone and ended up on City Way in Rochester to look for it.
00:25After having not found the phone they decided to continue on with their journey
00:28heading towards Rochester city centre. It's in that moment that tragedy struck.
00:33The friend's Skoda was hit by a BMW hurtling along the road in the opposite direction.
00:38They've been travelling at more than double the speed limit. The collision killed the back passengers
00:43Andrew Cass and Neil Harris with husband and wife Laurence Smith and Sue Smith left injured in the front.
00:50Later witnesses remarking Isidoro Olim 35 from Rochester wandering around the scene. He was on
00:55his phone but not to emergency services to his girlfriend Isabel Noons who had been at home the
01:01entire time. It was then Noons and Olim began to hatch a plan with both deciding to blame Noon for
01:08the
01:08collision. The court heard that Olim had been heading back from a night of drinking in Gillingham and by
01:13passing BAME avoided a roadside breathaliser test. Noon stuck to his story telling police that she didn't have
01:19time to break. But in January of the following year both came clean and in earlier this month both
01:26pled guilty in court. Today in front of a packed courtroom Judge Oliver Saxby delivered a lengthy
01:33prison sentence to Olim. He said the couple had acted in brazen deceit and said a catastrophic
01:38situation had been caused by Olim's dangerous driving. He said what you did Mr Olim has shattered the
01:45lives of so many people. Andrew Cass is genuine, kind, patient, someone with no agenda and Neil
01:52Harris is described as the fourth leg of his family's table, unassuming, someone interested in
01:56finding the positive in people. Both are so loved and cherished and desperately missed. The lives of
02:03the Casses and the Harrises will never be the same. By what you did you have consigned them to sorrow
02:07and
02:07grief which they'll fill at every moment of the day and which that will last a lifetime. Olim was
02:13sentenced to 17 years and two months in prison and that's for two counts of causing death by dangerous
02:18driving, two counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving and another count of perverting
02:23the course of justice. He cried as his sentence was read out. From Isabel Noons, 14 members of her
02:30family sat tearful in the public gallery watching her be sent down. She was served for 20 months in
02:35custody for one count of perverting the course of justice.
Comments