September 20, 2004
Texting driver jailed for deaths
A Swiss woman who drove her car into a police van, killing two officers, while sending a mobile phone text message has been sentenced to 30 months in prison, reports The BBC.
"Angela Shala, 33, was driving at 170km/h (105mph) on a French motorway in June 2003 while using her phone to find a friend's car she had been following.
The judge at the French court in Thonon-les-Bains, in Haute-Savoie, found Shala had been criminally negligent in causing the accident".
Related article:
-- Swiss woman sends SMS while driving. Kills 2 and 2 seriously wounded - A mother of two young children 1 and 3, pregnant with her third child was sending an SMS while driving on a French freeway at 100 m/per hour in June. She ran into a police vehicule with 4 officers.
The collision was so violent they were ejected from the car. One was killed on the spot, one died on the way to the hospital, one has spinal cord injury and the fourth, multiple fractures and a burst liver.
The French government is an uproar with French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy calling the woman" irresponsible and a killer": "For sending an SMS, 5 familes are overcome with trajedy, it's the equivalent of an assassination"
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