‘The driver who killed my girl is traumatised.... We wish him the very best,' says father after death crash

“Diamond”: Lavna Chuttoo died in a road accident on her way to school
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The father of a 14-year-old girl who died in a road accident on her way to school said he wishes “the very best” to the traumatised driver who hit her.

Lavna Chuttoo suffered “catastrophic” head injuries when she was struck by Gavin Jones’s truck a few hundred yards from Coombe Girls’ School in New Malden on November 17 last year.

Parents and passers-by tried to save her and an air ambulance attended but she was pronounced dead at the scene near New Malden railway station.

Mr Jones was exonerated after a police investigation which found he would have been unlikely to see Lavna when she ran into the road at a junction, West London coroner’s court heard.

Speaking after the inquest, Lavna’s father Chetan Chuttoo said he had got “closure” from meeting the police team who had investigated the crash. He added: “I know the driver is traumatised from what happened. We wish him the very best. I received his condolences at the time, which meant a lot.”

Tragic: Lavna Chuttoo with her father Chetan

Mr Chuttoo described his daughter as a “diamond” and said that in her short life she “taught people to be more aware about life”.

“She was only 14 years old, and whatever she has done, she had done a good job and got people together and brought them together,” he said.

Detective Sergeant John Hartfree told the inquest that Mr Jones’s lorry had passed Lavna about 45 metres before the junction of Coombe Road and Lime Grove.

“Miss Chuttoo began to run into the road and in effect ran into the path of the lorry and was killed,” he said in his report. “In conclusion it is not likely the driver would have been able to see her when she went into the road.”

Coroner Chinyere Inyama returned a verdict of road traffic collision and described the incident as a tragic accident. During the inquest, Lavna’s friends and teachers praised her “sense of humour, her happiness, her rapturous smile and her infectious laughter”.

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