Drink driver who killed charity cyclist and buried body in bog is jailed
Mr Parsons was killed while on a 100-mile charity cycle from his home in Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire, to Fort William
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Alexander McKellar, a drink-driver who admitted killing a charity cyclist by hitting him and abandoning him by the side of the road, has been jailed for 12 years at the High Court in Glasgow.
Originally charged with murdering Mr Parsons, McKellar pleaded guilty to an amended charge of culpable homicide.
McKellar and his twin brother Robert also admitted attempting to defeat the ends of justice at the High Court in Glasgow last month.
Robert McKellar was sentenced to five years and three months in jail.
The court heard in a narrative last month how some time between September 29, 2017 and January 3, 2021, the McKellar brothers returned to the A82 and moved Mr Parsons’s body to the Auch Estate and buried him with an excavator in a peat bog where animal carcasses were disposed of.
After a missing persons inquiry was launched on October 2, 2017 when Mr Parsons failed to return home, police launched a major investigation following a tip-off from a woman McKellar had begun a relationship with in 2020, the court heard.
McKellar admitted to the woman he had hit Mr Parsons with an Isuzu D-Max pick-up while speeding.
Advocate depute Alex Prentice KC told the court that McKellar had said to the woman that he had been “distracted” by headlights and struck something on the side of the A82, which turned out to be Mr Parsons.
The woman left a can of Red Bull in the area where Mr Parsons’s body had been hidden and detectives later found the scene.
Mr Parsons was killed after he was hit by McKellar’s car while on a 100-mile charity cycle from his home in Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire, to Fort William.
McKellar admitted driving on the A82 at “excess speed and when unfit through alcohol”, hitting the cyclist, who sustained multiple rib and pelvic fractures.
With “reckless disregard” for the consequences of his actions, he left Mr Parsons by the side of the road “in a remote location during the hours of darkness and in inclement weather”, causing his death, the court heard.
Judge Lord Armstrong said Mr Parsons likely died from “impacted breathing and a bleeding thorax”.
As well as burying his body, the brothers also hid Mr Parsons’s bicycle behind a waterfall on the Auch Estate but this has never been recovered, the court heard.
The two men were arrested on December 20, 2020 and Mr Parsons’s body was recovered for forensic investigation in January 2021.
Sentencing Alexander McKellar, Judge Lord Armstrong said: “Mr Parsons’s family have been deeply impacted and the emotional harm is ongoing.
“There is nothing I can say or do to compensate for their loss.”
The cyclist’s family released a statement after the guilty pleas, saying he loved “nothing more” than spending time with his grandchildren.
The statement said: “As you can imagine, not knowing what has happened to someone and then the devastating news that we were provided has taken its toll on all of us as a family.
“At last justice has been done and we would like to thank not only the court officials and officers from Police Scotland’s major investigation team, Forth Valley Division; and other Police Scotland departments who worked on this case, but all the volunteers and mountain rescue teams who tirelessly searched for him in the earlier stages of the inquiry.”