A 15-year-old girl who was killed by a “show-off” driver just months after receiving a life-saving kidney transplant “fought hard” to be a normal teenager, her family said. Keely Morgan had just been given a “second chance of life” when she was struck down by Christopher West, 42, at a pedestrian crossing in Wales. West claimed he “hadn’t seen” the schoolgirl, but his two daughters and a friend, who were in the back of his car, said he had been driving “a little fast” and “snaking” his Vauxhall Astra on the journey from Barry to Cardiff in May 2023.
West turned to his daughters and asked if he should remove the vehicle’s black box before setting off and admitted to both causing death by careless driving and driving without insurance. “Keely was only 15-years-old when she was struck and killed by a car at a pedestrian crossing, a place she should have been safe, just making her way home,” the teenager’s mother Sian Morgan said in a victim statement.
“This tragedy has shattered my family beyond repair and is a loss we will carry for the rest of our lives,” she added.
“[Keely] fought so hard to have the opportunity to live a normal life and have the joys of being a teenager. She remained brave, courageous and positive, but those dreams have cruelly been taken from her in an instant.
“She’ll never be able to finish school, go to university, follow her dreams [and] experience the joys and milestones of life.”
Ms Morgan said “no words” could describe the pain of losing her daughter and described the world as a “darker place without her”.
“This was totally avoidable,” she told Keely’s killer. “That one decision, that one moment, took everything from us.
“A pedestrian crossing is meant to protect people like Keely, who was using the crossing appropriately as she had a right to do so but was struck and killed.
“You had a duty to uphold fundamental safety laws … and you chose not to do so … Her life mattered. Her death must mean something. No sentence will ever bring her back.”
A previous hearing was told a collision investigator estimated that West was driving at 38 miles per hour when he struck Keely in the 30mph zone.
A post mortem examination found that she died of blunt force injuries. West, of Ely in Cardiff, will be sentenced at Cardiff Crown Court on Thursday.
