A footballer who admitted causing the death of a cyclist due to a “momentary lapse of concentration” while driving his seven-year-old daughter to a piano lesson has been jailed.
Mansfield Town player Lucas Akins’ Mercedes G-Wagon hit Adrian Daniel as the forward attempted to turn at what prosecutors called a “difficult” rural T-junction in March 2022.
Daniel, a father of one who was riding home from work, suffered catastrophic head injuries and died in hospital 10 days later. His helmet camera captured the incident.
Grenada international Akins, who played for his League One club just hours after he admitted causing death by careless driving ahead of a trial in March this year, was sentenced to 14 months in prison and disqualified from driving for two years at Leeds Crown Court.
The 36-year-old had continued to play for Mansfield since pleading guilty, making eight appearances for the club, which in a statement on Thursday offered its “sincere and deepest condolences” to Daniel’s family. “The club is considering its position with regards to Lucas,” the statement added. Akins is out of contract with Mansfield at the end of June.
The cyclist’s widow, Savannah Daniel, read out a victim impact statement in court which asked the judge to spare Akins jail in order to prevent further suffering following the accident three years ago.
(George Wood/Getty Images)
Akins is a father of three, and also had his youngest daughter who was seven months old at the time, in the back of his car when it hit Daniel.
Judge Alex Menary said Akins did not carry out the required safety checks before “emerging from a minor road to a major road across the path of oncoming traffic when it was not safe to do so”.
Akins stopped at the scene and attempted to help Daniel, and has since expressed his remorse and written to the cyclist’s wife to apologise.
“Pausing for more time to check it was safe to proceed would then have allowed for Mr Daniel to travel through any blind spot created either by the layout of the road or your vehicle,” said Judge Menary. “It is conceded on your behalf that you were familiar with the junction and its idiosyncrasies.
“No circumstances can be seen that you ought not to have been exercising additional caution before emerging from a difficult junction across the path of oncoming traffic in a vehicle that had substantial ‘A pillars’ (the structure in a car that frame the windshield at the front). In the event you failed to see Mr Daniel and drove into collision with him.
“The impact was devastating and he was thrown from his bicycle.”
He added: “In interview, you say that you checked both left and right twice at the mouth of the junction for other road users, but didn’t see anyone and so emerged into the main road crossing the path of oncoming traffic.
“On any analysis, be it prosecution or defence, it does not seem that you would have had sufficient time to do those checks and it is plain that you did not carry them out because, had you done so, you would have seen Daniel who was there to be seen.”
Daniel, Judge Menary noted, had been cycling safely in the correct position on the road and was travelling under the speed limit.
Club statement: Lucas Akins
— Mansfield Town FC (@mansfieldtownfc) April 24, 2025
Character statements on behalf of Akins described him as a good role model professionally and privately, hard-working and a devoted father. He has no previous convictions.
He had appeared in the dock wearing a dark suit and tie, carrying a leather overnight bag of his belongings, and wiped his eyes with a tissue as Mrs Daniel read out her statement.
Describing her husband as an “adrenaline junkie” who loved rock climbing and taking part in downhill mountain bike races, she described how he became a loving father to her daughter Evie after they began a relationship in 2019.
She said that the 33-year-old had survived a previous accident 11 years ago. “I believe he came through that in order to meet us and show us true love,” she said. “He always said that home was where his girls were.”
Mrs Daniel, who described the time since the accident as “three years of hell”, has had to leave her job at Oldham hospital due to the trauma of her husband’s death and has been receiving counselling and therapy.
“I know the driver has a young family and I don’t want them to grow up without their dad,” she said. “We do not need any more lives to be destroyed by this.”
In sentencing, Judge Menary said that while he “accepts there was a momentary lapse of concentration” he does “not consider that this case of poor driving could be categorised as falling only just over the threshold of carelessness”.
He added that Akins initial failure to plead guilty until just before the trial was due to start “only prolonged the heartache and grief of Mrs Daniel”.
(Top photo: George Wood/Getty Images)