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A police officer who caused a fatal collision with a 74-year-old woman on a motorbike while he answered a grade-one emergency call about a choking baby has been convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.
Pc Mark Roberts was speeding when he went through a red light which had been on "stop" for six seconds and collided with Ronald and Muriel Pinkney in his marked Northumbria Police Peugeot 308.
Mrs Pinkney sustained fatal head and neck injuries in the collision on a 30mph stretch of road near the MetroCentre in Gateshead in July 2022.
The 57-year-old officer, who lives in Darlington, had admitted causing death by careless driving but denied the more serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving.
The jury at Teesside Crown Court took 56 minutes to come to their verdicts on Wednesday.
The Northumbria Police officer was also convicted of causing Mr Pinkney, who suffered a bleed on the brain and multiple fractures, serious injury by dangerous driving.
The prosecution said Roberts should have approached the junction more slowly and told the jury the police's roadcraft guidance stated that risk taking, even in a "noble cause", was not justified.
Judge Francis Laird KC granted Roberts bail ahead of his sentencing on April 7.
The judge said: "The jury have convicted you of the more serious offences and, with your background, you understand the significance.
"I will need to consider what is an appropriate sentence for the two offences for which you have been found guilty and I will benefit greatly from a pre-sentence report."
Roberts, who has been suspended by his force, was arrested after the collision and later answered "no comment" to questions during his formal interview but provided a prepared statement.
In it, he said the ambulance service had requested assistance about a choking five-week-old baby, which indicated paramedics did not believe they could get to the patient before police.
Roberts said he took his marked vehicle from Whickham police station, activated his blue lights and sirens, changing the tone of the alert at times, as he made his way through traffic and red lights.
Moments before the collision with the Pinkneys' motorbike, the officer saw a white van make an emergency stop, he said.
"I couldn't see anything else before travelling towards the junction," the officer said in his statement, which was read out in court on Tuesday.
"The next thing I recall is there was a bang and both airbags deployed and I hit the windscreen, which knocked me out for a few seconds."
He then saw two people on the ground with crash helmets on.
He blacked out again and was treated in an ambulance and then taken to hospital.
Roberts said: "I believe this was a tragic accident."
He finished his statement by offering Mrs Pinkney's family his "sincere condolences".
Mr Pinkney, now 81, was interviewed by police and said he could hear a police siren but it seemed to be coming from a long way away.
Mr Pinkney said: "I had not seen the police car driven by Pc Mark Roberts before the collision."
Summing up the case, the judge told jurors it would be understandable if they held sympathy for the Pinkneys or the defendant, describing him as "a serving police officer responding to an emergency and who, of course, never intended to cause anyone any harm".
