Death crash charges (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Death crash charges

1:00pm Friday 19th March 2010 in

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AN AMERICAN jewellery firm heir is to face charges over the deaths of a former Basingstoke school head boy and his work colleague.

Craig Elford, 39, who attended the then Harriet Costello School, and his work colleague Kenneth Watkinson, 48, died in an alleged hit-and-run incident as they walked to their hotel in Fort Lauder-dale, Florida, on Feb-ruary 13 last year. It is alleged the pair were hit by a Porsche GT2, which mounted the kerb before speeding off.

The high-performance car is said to be owned by Ryan LeVin, an heir to the multi-million-pound Chicago-based company Jewels by Park Lane.

Florida-based newspaper The Sun Sentinel reported on Monday that the Broward State Attorney’s Office has charged LeVin, 35, with two counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of leaving the scene of an accident causing death.

It also reported a second man, Derek W Cook, has been charged with being an accessory, and is also accused of aggravated fleeing and eluding.

Mr Elford (pictured), from Ratley, Oxfordshire, and Mr Watkinson, of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, ran pharmaceutical business Ingala Healthcare, and were on a business trip at the time of the crash.

Mr Elford was head boy at Harriet Costello School from 1985 to 1986, and also attended Fairfields School and Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke.

At the time of his death, former classmate Paul Gross, of Camrose Way, Cranbourne, told The Gazette that Mr Elford was “academically bright but also a good egg all round”.

He was married and had two daughters, Olivia, now aged one, and Char-lotte, now aged three.