'My six kids screamed and cried when I told them dad was never coming home'

28 September 2023 , 09:44

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Jamie Evans has been jailed for nine years (Image: PA)

A mother told of her grief after her partner was killed in a hit-and-run crash by a speeding driver moments after police left him barefoot outside without money or his mobile phone.

Rachel Roper had to tell the six children she shared with husband Gareth he was "never coming back" following the smash, in which a driver hit 55mph in a 30mph zone. Mr Roper, 35, died of head injuries at the scene in Wigan, Greater Manchester, where he was dumped by police after he was de-arrested nine minutes after being detained at his home.

Speaking today, Mrs Roper said: "Nobody ever expects that the police will come to your door and tell you that your husband has been killed in a hit and run. I still remember that moment they told me and will always remember it. It didn't seem real what we were being told. He was only taken away from the house about 45 minutes earlier and now I was being told that he was dead."

Gareth Roper, 35, was killed in a hit-and-run crash in Greater Manchester (Facebook)

Jamie Evans, who was behind the wheel of the 2013 Volvo V60 which struck Mr Roper, was jailed for nine years on Tuesday at Bolton Crown Court after admitting death by dangerous driving. Evans was seen 40 minutes earlier on CCTV opening a can of Stella from a petrol station before swigging from a spirits bottle. The 30-year-old man, driving on an expired provisional licence, hit Mr Roper and drove away in the early hours of New Year's Day 2022.

The officers who left Mr Roper remain under investigation, Manchester Evening News reports. Mrs Roper said she still remembers her children's "screams and cries" after she told them their dad "was never coming back". They were "shouting for their daddy", she said. Her "thriving kids", turned into "shells of people", she wrote, adding: "We were a happy family, but since that night all of that has changed.

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She told Evans: "[You have] ruined a happy family, with a hardworking dad, who worked every hour to provide for his children. [You have] taken all that away from them and for no reason." Mrs Roper said she couldn't forgive Evans, who she said had shown no remorse. "When I found out he was local to the area I felt sick," she said. "Why didn't he stop?"

"Never once has he apologised for his actions, instead he has spent the last 18 months denying he was in the wrong, blaming others. Somehow, he even goes on my Facebook and screenshots my posts and sends them to friends of mine. He just doesn't care."

Police investigate the crash in Wigan, Greater Manchester (Men Media)

Mr Roper's brother Barry Hatton told the court in a statement he too had been made aware of Evans posting photographs on Facebook showing him partying. Mr Hatton said Evans had been "bagging and laughing" about going "on holiday" to Forest Bank prison.

Mr Hatton described the heartache of seeing the pain etched on the faces of his nephew and nieces. An emotional statement by Mr Roper's mother Joyce King was then read to the court. "Within a split second your actions shattered our lives forever," she told Evans, of no fixed address. "We wake up in the morning wishing it not to be true that our Gareth is gone, go to bed each night hoping to dream about him just to see him again.

"Playing voicemails and videos of him over and over again just to hear his voice and his laugh again. You didn't just take our Gareth from us, you took us from him, you robbed him of the chance to see all his children grow up. The way you just left him in the road, like he was nothing, will forever haunt us, and he might not have meant anything to you, but Gareth was and still is our everything."

Imogen Clyde-Smith