A MAN said to be responsible for a fatal accident at a village road junction on Good Friday will be sentenced next month.

Peter Rogers was told that all sentencing options, including custody, will be a possibility when he returns to Durham Crown Court in the New Year.

The defendant was at the wheel of a Vauxhall Zafira which was said to have emerged from a side road, failing to comply with a Give Way instruction, before striking a passing car on Edmondsley crossroads, near Chester-le-Street, on Friday April 3.

His car collided with the side of a Hyundai Getz, which was travelling on the B6532 in Edmondsley, shortly after 10am.

It resulted in the Hyundai being thrown onto its side and after being righted, by passers-by, rear seat passenger Raymond Armstrong was freed and taken unconscious to Durham’s University Hospital of North Durham.

The death of the 79-year-old, from Edmondsley, was later confirmed at the hospital.

Other occupants of the car, a 53-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman, also from the village, suffered minor injuries for which they received hospital treatment.

Forty-three-year-old Rogers, and his three passengers in the Zafira, a 32-year-old woman and girls, aged five and two, all from Newcastle, also needed hospital treatment for minor injuries.

Rogers, now 44, of Moulton Place, in Blakelaw, was subsequently charged with causing Mr Armstrong’s death by careless driving.

During a preliminary hearing at the court today (Tuesday December 15) a guilty plea was indicated through his counsel Kieran O’Neill.

He, therefore, asked for the preparation of background reports on his client, by the Probation Service, prior to sentence, next month.

Agreeing, Judge Christopher Prince extended Rogers’ bail and imposed an interim driving ban, the length of which will be determined at the sentencing hearing, on January 22.