TEACHER Eleanor Brown, 27, has been convicted of causing death by dangerous driving.

One of the relatives and friends of moped rider Lee Roberts, who died in a head-on crash near Stanton St Bernard in October last year, called out “Yes” when a jury at Salisbury Crown Court returned a guilty verdict yesterday.

Brown, of Holts Row, Marlborough, who is a classics teacher at St John’s School in the town, had already admitted the less serious charge of causing death by careless driving but the Crown Prosecution Service did not accept that plea.

Judge Douglas Field adjourned the case for pre-sentence reports and extended Brown’s bail until a hearing at Swindon Crown Court on Wednesday, January 18.

Brown shook her head as the women jury foreman announced the verdict.

Members of her family and also relatives of Mr Roberts, 35, from Little Island, Pewsey, including his wife Becky and mother Ruth had sat through the hearing.

The maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving was increased in 2003 from ten to 14 years imprisonment and a two-year driving ban is mandatory.

Brown was driving her Skoda car along the C8 back road from Devizes to Pewsey between Horton and Alton Barnes on October 21 last year when she overtook a Ford Transit van and hit the oncoming moped ridden by the father of two who was riding to his work as a butcher at a farm shop at Coate.

Mr Roberts was killed instantaneously and the crash left his moped embedded in the front of the Skoda.

In his summing up the judge offered his condolences to the Roberts family but told the jury: “The defendent’s life has also been devastated by this tragedy.”

See the Gazette&Herald on December 22 for full report