A chef has been found guilty of attempting to murder a schoolgirl by removing her seatbelt and deliberately crashing the car in which they were travelling after he discovered his wife had killed herself.
The crash happened hours after Lukasz Jarosz found the body of his wife, Aneta, in the bathroom of their home in Wilton, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, in January.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, sustained a broken leg and had to be freed from the car by firefighters.
At Bournemouth crown court, the judge Brian Forster QC said: “There is no similar case that we are aware of. It’s a case that has an exceptional set of circumstances and it’s right they are carefully considered.”
Jarosz, 35, will be sentenced on Monday.
During the trial Jarosz sobbed as he told the jury of the moment he woke up from a nap at home to find the body of his wife in the bathroom.
“I started to cuddle her. I then put my wife on our bed and I folded her hands,” he said. “I cuddled her for an awful long time and I cried and I screamed: ‘Why did you do this, why this?’”
Jarosz said that when he was driving the schoolgirl later that day he “had no plans whatsoever” of what he intended to do.
“I can’t remember half of the things. I know I had teary eyes. I remember nothing else, I do not remember the accident, nothing. I couldn’t basically collect myself, to hold it all together. I was just driving around in circles.”
Jarosz said he did not remember unclipping the girl’s seatbelt shortly before the crash in Wilton or preventing her from leaving the car.
The court heard that Aneta Jarosz had talked about taking her own life and had made an earlier attempt.
Kerry Maylin, prosecuting, told the court that the defendant became “hysterical” after finding his wife’s body.
Maylin said Jarosz’s Skoda Superb hit a van and a railway bridge, and the schoolgirl was trapped in the front passenger seat until firefighters freed her.
• In the UK the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
