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Victory for mum over son’s death

by Ben Turner
23/ 4/2008

A MOTHER who won a seven-year fight to overturn the verdict into the hit-and-run death of her only son says her heart "will always be broken".

Father-of-one Carl David Nield, 29, of Green Street, Macclesfield, died exactly a month after bhe was dragged at least 23 feet under a red Ford Mondeo – at the hands of an uninsured driver who fled the scene.

He left his mum Pam Nield and four-year-old daughter devastated.

Known as "Nieldy" to friends, the young joiner sustained horrific injuries at the junction of Chestergate and Churchill Way in the early hours of March 21, 1998.

Last Wednesday – just four days before the tenth anniversary of his death – Coroner Nicholas Rheinberg returned a ‘narrative’ verdict for Mr Nield’s death in a new inquest at Stockport Magistrates Court.

The Ford driver, James Richard Cross, formerly of Upton Priory, Macclesfield, and now of Bluebell Close, Biddulph, Stoke-on-Trent, originally served a three-month jail term and six-mont-h driving ban for driving without insurance, failing to stop after an accident and failing to report an accident.

But he successfully appealed against the original inquest verdict of unlawful killing in the aftermath of his conviction and it was replaced with an open verdict in 2001.

Distraught mum Pam Nield finally succeeded in getting this quashed in the High Court in 2005, leading to last Wednesday’s – as she sees it – partial victory.

She said: "Anything is better than an open verdict. That was an absolute insult – not only to Carl’s family but to Carl himself."

Mr Rheinberg also criticised driver James Cross, the co-owner of the car and a passenger for their "lies" when giving evidence.