A professional footballer has been jailed for causing the death of a cyclist in a car crash.
Mansfield Town forward Lucas Akins crashed into Adrian Daniel in his Mercedes G350 in Huddersfield on 17 March 2022, while taking his daughter to a piano lesson.
Leeds Crown Court heard that Mr Daniel, 33, suffered catastrophic head injuries and died 10 days later.
Akins, 36, played in Mansfield’s 0-0 draw with Wigan on 4 March, hours after pleading guilty at Leeds Crown Court to death by careless or inconsiderate driving.
The footballer has continued to play for Mansfield since the incident.
Judge Alex Menary said on Thursday that he had considered imposing a suspended sentence, but had concluded that only an immediate sentence of 14 months’ imprisonment was appropriate.
A spokesperson for Mansfield Town FC said it “acknowledges” the court’s decision and offered the club’s “sincere and deepest condolences to the family of Adrian Daniel at this difficult time”.
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“The club is considering its position with regards to Lucas and will be making no further comment at this stage,” the spokesperson added.
‘Like hell’
Prosecuting, Carmel Pearson said it was a “difficult junction to emerge from” but that the defendant “did not stop at the give-way sign”.
Savanna Daniel, Mr Daniel’s wife, told the court it had been “like hell and a nightmare [she is] not waking up from”.
“There was no reason for Adrian to be killed that way,” she said, adding it was “too simple a collision to have taken a life”.
Mrs Daniel said she did not want Akins’s children growing up without their father as she did not want “any more lives to be destroyed from this”, but she criticised the defendant for failing to plead guilty at an earlier stage.
Tim Pole, representing Akins, said he was “fundamentally a decent, honest and hard-working individual”.
“I want to publicly apologise on his behalf,” he said.
Mr Pole added that Akins understood Mrs Daniel’s “frustration and anger” over the time it took him to plead guilty.
Handing down his sentence, the judge accepted that Akins’s remorse was genuine but by not admitting to the offence at an earlier stage, he had prolonged Mrs Daniel’s “heartache and grief”.
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After the sentencing, Mrs Daniel said “three years of hell” had come to a close, in a statement via West Yorkshire Police.
She said Akins had made a “farce” of the justice system and that his failure to plead guilty sooner “makes a mockery of any remorse that Akins offers for his actions”.
Akins, who has played for Mansfield Town since 2022 and was previously with clubs including Huddersfield Town, Tranmere Rovers and Burton Albion, was also suspended from driving for 12 months.
