Victoria Dickinson was jailed for three years and four months at Nottingham Crown Court today
A woman pushed her depressed friend off a railway bridge, then told shocked witnesses: ‘She wanted me to.’
Kate Wiggett suffered serious injuries after Victoria Dickinson shoved her 25ft on to the tracks.
Her life was saved when passers-by dragged her from the tracks as a train approached.
Yesterday mother-of-six Dickinson, 28, was jailed for attempted murder.
She claimed Miss Wiggett, also 28, had repeatedly begged her for help in commiting suicide.
But
jailing Dickinson for three years and four months, the judge told her
she could have refused and insisted that her friend see a doctor.
Witnesses
told how she pushed Miss Wiggett as the pair sat on the bridge near
Malvern Link station in Worcestershire and counted to three together.
When
confronted, Dickinson replied ‘She wanted that’, Nottingham Crown Court
heard. She fled and was arrested at her home in Malvern Link.
Miss Wiggett suffered a fractured skull and multiple fractures of the spine and pelvis.
She
was in a coma for a month but has almost fully recovered. However she
has no memory of the incident, and ‘struggled to comprehend’ how her
friend could have pushed her, the court heard.
The
‘troubling, sad and bizarre’ incident occurred after the pair had been
drinking together last November, said Jonas Hankin QC, prosecuting.
In
the weeks before, Miss Wiggett had suffered domestic problems. She had
been asked to leave the family home because of heavy drinking and often
spoke of ending her life.
A week before her fall, she had taken
an overdose of anti-depressants and told friends she wanted to kill
herself by ‘jumping from a bridge’, but was ‘too scared to do it’.
Mr Hankin said that Dickinson, then
seven months pregnant, told police she was ‘adamant’ that she did not
want to push her friend off the bridge, but Miss Wiggett had ‘kept on
and on about it’.
She denied knowing a train was approaching.
The railway bridge in Malvern Link, where Victoria Dickinson pushed her suicidal friend onto the tracks as a train approached
Mr Hankin said Dickinson had been ‘too
ready to take part in the victim’s death. She made no offer to dissuade
or help the victim, or to get her help’.
Dickinson was initially charged under
the Suicide Act with helping someone take their own life, but later
pleaded guilty to attempted murder.
Judge Mr Justice Flaux said he
accepted Miss Wiggett had repeatedly asked Dickinson to help her kill
herself, and had asked her to push her from the bridge. However, he told
her: ‘You could have refused. You made no effort to seek assistance.’
It was a ‘spontaneous attempt to kill, rather than one that was planned’, he added.
Nicholas Roberts, defending, said Dickinson accepted that she should not have pushed Miss Wiggett.
After an earlier hearing, sector crown
prosecutor David Elliott said Dickinson’s actions were ‘callous and
deliberate – she was fully aware that the victim was vulnerable and
upset... but instead of seeking out care and assistance for her, she
tried to assist in killing her.’
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