20 July 2024 , 08:09
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New footage shows how a man callously left his fiancée to die after recklessly crashing his car while she was in the passenger seat.
Motorists said they saw Cameron Jones, 30, driving his Audi at between 70mph and 120mph on 20mph residential roads in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, before losing control on April 5 last year.
He crashed into a garden wall, causing an impact so forceful that another witness said the scene looked ‘like a bomb had gone off’ with ‘car parts everywhere’.
Demi Leigh Mabbitt, 25, was flung 27 metres from the car and suffered fatal injuries but did not immediately die.
Cameron Jones fled the scene and evaded police for more than three weeks (Picture: Wales News Service)
Jones used Demi’s phone to call police but immediately set about trying to cover up his actions, telling the operator: ‘My missus has just crashed her car.’
He picked up a bag from the car before fleeing, telling bystanders: ‘I need to get the guy who was driving the car’ and ‘My missus just crashed the car’.
Nearby CCTV cameras captured the moment the car hurtled past homes at breakneck speeds, later recording Jones legging it in the other direction.
Demi Mabbitt died aged 25 after a week in hospital (Picture: Wales News Service)
A member of the public performed CPR on Mabbitt until she was taken to hospital. She died a week later.
In the meantime Jones avoided attempts by detectives to hunt him down, and he did not hand himself into police a total of 24 days after the crash.
He had been released from prison just 30 days earlier and had 27 convictions for 55 offences including two for dangerous driving in 2015 and 2018, a court heard.
The 30-year-old refused to answer police questions but gave a prepared statement admitting responsibility for Demi’s death.
He later pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and two related charges.
Jones wrote a letter to his trial judge in which he described Demi as ‘the love of my life’.
The judge told him: ‘I find that disingenuous and untrue. No-one would leave the love of their life alone and catastrophically injured on a wet road.’
‘Despite her lying seriously injured on the wet road nearby, you callously sought to blame her for what happened and absolve yourself of your responsibility for what you had done.’
In a statement read out in court Demi’s sister, Gemma Williams, told Jones: ‘You left our girl alone on a cold, dark, wet road, fighting for her life. You didn’t even have the decency to call an ambulance.
‘I can’t grieve for my sister because I am consumed by the anger and hate I feel for you.’
Demi’s father, Paul, added: ‘The world and our family are smaller and incomplete without Demi here.’