EXCLUSIVE: Paula Overton received an automated text message from her husband Ben’s Garmin watch as he cycled home from work – an hour before police knocked on her door to say he’d died in a fatal crash
A grieving widow today told how her husband’s GPS tracker sent her a message saying he’d had an accident – an hour before police arrived to tell her he was dead.
Paula Overton, 32, received an automated text message from her husband Ben’s Garmin watch as he cycled home from work. But she never imagined an hour later police would tell her he had died in a fatal crash.
Ben was killed in February 2022 after a head-on collision with a car on a small country road in Crawley, Sussex. Recalling the day she lost Ben, Paula said she knew something was wrong before police had even knocked on her door.
Speaking after the driver admitted partial liability for the crash, Paula said: “It was just normal day. Ben gave me a kiss on the forehead and went off to work. He messaged me during the day to let me know that he’d booked some annual leave around my birthday, so that we could go to Cyprus.
“I would finish work and get home before him, so I went for a bath. I was laid in the bath, when my phone went. It was this automated message that said, ‘Benjamin Overton’s Garmin device has detected an incident’. Then it gave me the coordinates. I thought it was a really weird message to receive so I decided to check a tracking app we had for each other.
“I would sometimes check it so I knew where he was on his way home, and I could have dinner ready for when he got in – but also for safety reasons as well. Normally it showed a map, and it had a little pinpoint where Ben was. I expected that pinpoint to be moving along, but it was just stationary in the middle of the road.
“Every possible scenario started running through my mind, I thought his phone could have fallen out his pocket or he could have been in an accident. I got out of the bath, wrote down the coordinates and I called 999, I was just so scared.
“I had no idea what to think. I was just pacing around the flat waiting to hear and then they called back 10 minutes later and said ‘We can confirm that there has been an accident’. I asked ‘is he alive’? And they said, ‘We don’t have that information at the moment’. About an hour later a policeman turned up at my door, and I just knew it wasn’t good news. I said, ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ And he just gave me a hug.”
Childhood sweethearts, Ben and Paula had first met in college when a mutual friend played matchmaker by pushing them together. Their relationship had defied a 150-mile gap while Paula went off to university, before travelling Europe and Japan together and then tying the knot in 2019.
In the months that followed Ben’s death Paula received no updates from the police, who said they couldn’t tell her anything about their investigation without jeopardising it. But the CPS decided there was not sufficient evidence to charge the driver – and despite reviewing the case three times, it was finally dropped by the CPS and police late last year.
The decision meant that Ben’s inquest could take place in February this year – four years after his death. Paula enlisted specialist lawyers and launched a legal fight for justice. The defendant has now accepted partial liability.
Paula added: “It just felt really painful, the loss of Ben. You have no idea what’s going on, you’re just in shock. Every time I spoke to the police I felt like I was living in this constant cycle of remembering how he died and not all the happy memories we had before that.
“When they decided that there was not enough evidence to prosecute, I felt like I was never going to get justice for him. When the person you love is killed you expect that someone is going to be held responsible. There was a moment at the inquest when I just started crying because the GPS evidence was so convincing that Ben was on the correct side of the road.
“I felt like it was really harsh decision to not prosecute the driver based on that evidence that I saw.” After the inquest, solicitors from Fletchers pursued a case against the driver’s insurers and partial liability was agreed.
Paula said: “Hearing that they had admitted partial liability allowed me to move on in some ways. I think I had the closure that I needed because in my heart, I had gathered what had happened. I know who was at fault, and I really strongly believe it was the driver.”
Victoria Martin, Fletchers Solicitors said: “The last four years have been unimaginably painful for Paula, who has been constantly searching for answers about exactly what happened to Ben. We hope that our case has provided some of those answers and given her some sense of justice for Ben.”
