Mansfield’s Lucas Akins sentenced to 14 months in prison for causing death of cyclist while driving

A footballer who admitted causing the death of a cyclist due to a “momentary lapse of concentration” while driving his seven-year-old daughter to a piano lesson has been jailed.

Mansfield Town player Lucas Akins hit Adrian Daniel with his Mercedes G-Wagon as the forward attempted to turn at what prosecutors called a “difficult” rural T-junction in March 2022.

Daniel, a father of one who was riding home from work, suffered catastrophic head injuries and died in hospital 10 days later. His helmet camera captured the incident.

Grenada international Akins, who played for his League One club just hours after he admitted causing death by careless driving ahead of a trial in March this year, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and disqualified from driving for two years at Leeds Crown Court.

The 36-year-old had continued to play for Mansfield since pleading guilty, making eight appearances for the club, which, in a statement on Thursday, offered its “sincere and deepest condolences” to Daniel’s family. “The club is considering its position with regards to Lucas,” the statement added. Akins is out of contract with Mansfield at the end of June.

The cyclist’s widow, Savanna Daniel, read out a victim impact statement in court, which asked the judge to spare Akins jail to prevent further suffering following the accident three years ago.

Akins is a father of three and also had his youngest daughter, who was seven months old at the time, in the back of his car when it hit Daniel.

Judge Alex Menary said Akins did not carry out the required safety checks before “emerging from a minor road to a major road across the path of oncoming traffic when it was not safe to do so”.

Akins stopped at the scene and attempted to help Daniel and has since expressed his remorse and written to the cyclist’s wife to apologise.

“Pausing for more time to check it was safe to proceed would then have allowed for Mr Daniel to travel through any blind spot created either by the layout of the road or your vehicle,” said Judge Menary. “It is conceded on your behalf that you were familiar with the junction and its idiosyncrasies.

“No circumstances can be seen that you ought not to have been exercising additional caution before emerging from a difficult junction across the path of oncoming traffic in a vehicle that had substantial ‘A pillars’ (the structure in a car that frames the windshield at the front). In the event, you failed to see Mr Daniel and drove into collision with him.

“The impact was devastating and he was thrown from his bicycle.”

He added: “In interview, you say that you checked both left and right twice at the mouth of the junction for other road users but didn’t see anyone and so emerged into the main road crossing the path of oncoming traffic.

“On any analysis, be it prosecution or defence, it does not seem that you would have had sufficient time to do those checks and it is plain that you did not carry them out because, had you done so, you would have seen Daniel, who was there to be seen.”

Daniel, Judge Menary noted, had been cycling safely in the correct position on the road and was travelling under the speed limit.

Character statements on behalf of Akins described him as a good role model professionally and privately, hard-working and a devoted father. He has no previous convictions.

He had appeared in the dock wearing a dark suit and tie, carrying a leather overnight bag of his belongings, and wiped his eyes with a tissue as Mrs Daniel read out her statement.

Describing her husband as an “adrenaline junkie” who loved rock climbing and taking part in downhill mountain bike races, she described how he became a loving father to her daughter Evie after they began a relationship in 2019.

She said the 33-year-old had survived a previous accident 11 years ago. “I believe he came through that in order to meet us and show us true love,” she said. “He always said that home was where his girls were.”

Mrs Daniel, who described the time since the accident as “three years of hell”, has had to leave her job at Oldham hospital due to the trauma of her husband’s death and has been receiving counselling and therapy.

“I know the driver has a young family and I don’t want them to grow up without their dad,” she said. “We do not need any more lives to be destroyed by this.”

In sentencing, Judge Menary said that while he “accepts there was a momentary lapse of concentration”, he does “not consider that this case of poor driving could be categorised as falling only just over the threshold of carelessness”.

He added that Akins’ initial failure to plead guilty until just before the trial was due to start “only prolonged the heartache and grief of Mrs Daniel”.

From Greg O’Keeffe at Leeds Crown Court:

They were two loving fathers going about ordinary daily life when fate brought them, catastrophically, into each other’s orbit for a moment on that early spring afternoon.

Lucas Akins taking his daughter to a music lesson. Adrian Daniel cycling home from work to see his own child.

In the blink of an eye, Akins’ error at a tricky junction would take Daniel’s life, plunging his family into “three years of hell” and condemning himself to torment and unlimited guilt.

Akins, a footballer for Mansfield Town, is now beginning his first night behind bars, facing the prospect of at least seven months in jail before the possibility of being released to serve the remaining seven on licence.

Four days ago, he was playing for his club in a match watched by 8,377 fans at their One Call Stadium.

But for all his shock and remorse, it was the suffering of Daniel’s family which had the deepest impact on room 11 of Leeds Crown Court on Thursday, articulated with remarkable composure by the cyclist’s wife, Savanna.

The sheer ordinariness of the accident — the result of a lapse of concentration and Akins’ failure to assess the road while turning right across oncoming traffic — made it difficult for her to process.

“There was no reason for Adrian to have been killed that day,” she said. “If there had been drugs or drink or speed involved, it would have been easier to deal with, but this was too simple a collision to have taken his life.”

Her husband, as footage from the helmet camera he was wearing showed, had been doing everything right, but it did not matter. He died from his injuries in hospital, five months short of their first wedding anniversary.

Akins’ own marriage, according to his defence counsel, Tim Pole, has subsequently come to an end. He left his marital home three months after the accident, continuing to co-parent his three children. “He is fundamentally a decent, honest, hard-working individual,” said Pole.

“The nature of his employment means this conviction may make it difficult for him to continue with his career in the future, although because of his previous exemplary character, he has retained the support of his employer.”

One might expect positive words from his barrister, but compassion also came from Mrs Daniel, even if she is simultaneously still furious at Akins’ delay in pleading guilty before a trial was set to begin earlier this year.

“I know the driver has a young family and I don’t want them to grow up without their dad,” she said. “And the reality is that this may well happen. There are so many things that he could do with his time than spend it in prison. We do not need any more lives to be destroyed by this.”

In the end, it was left to the judge and sentencing guidelines to impose their own reality. A suspended sentence, he concluded, just did not reflect the gravity of the case.

Akins’ children, for a period at least, will have to visit him in prison. Daniel’s daughter, his “little best mate” according to Savanna, must visit her doting father’s grave.

(Top photo: George Wood/Getty Images)

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