Kenyatta Benjamin Sentenced to 16 Months for Dangerous Driving

Kenyatta Benjamin of Hatton has been sentenced to one year and four months in prison after admitting in the High Court today that he was driving dangerously when he struck four cyclists during a training ride in 2022.

Benjamin pleaded guilty to the dangerous driving charge and was also handed a four-year suspension of his driver’s licence.

The maximum prison sentence for the offence is two years.

The charge arose from a collision on Mother’s Day in May 2022, when Benjamin struck national cyclist Andre Simon and fellow cyclists Sean Weathered, Ghere Coates and Tiziano Rosignoli as they trained along Sir George Walter Highway.

All four cyclists were hospitalised after the crash.

Weathered, Coates and Rosignoli were later discharged, but Simon suffered significantly more serious injuries.

The 36-year-old father of one sustained head trauma and internal bleeding and spent an extended period in the Intensive Care Unit at the Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre.

Nearly two months after the collision, on July 2, 2022, Simon was flown to TIRR Memorial Hospital in Texas while in a wakefulness coma for further treatment.

He remained in the United States receiving medical care but died approximately a year and a month after the crash.

Despite Simon’s death, Benjamin was not charged with causing death by dangerous driving.

That is because Antigua and Barbuda law requires a victim to die within one year and one day of the incident for a charge of causing death by dangerous driving to apply.

Benjamin’s guilty plea today brings the dangerous-driving case arising from the 2022 collision to a conclusion, with the court imposing both a custodial sentence and a four-year driving ban.