A police officer was cleared yesterday of a charge that he injured a motorcyclist by driving without due care.

A Supreme Court jury found Barry Richards, an inspector with the Bermuda Police Service, not guilty by a unanimous verdict after several hours of deliberation.

Members of Mr Richards’s family gasped with relief as the verdict was read.

Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons told Mr Richards: “You have heard the verdict of the jury, and therefore you are free to go.”

Mr Richards, 50, declined to comment.

Prosecutors alleged over the two-week trial that Mr Richards was on his mobile phone and distracted when his car and a motorcycle collided at the junction of North Shore Road and My Lord’s Bay Road in Hamilton Parish on September 19, 2017.

The rider, Oronde Wilson Jr, lost a toe as a result of the crash and his foot was so badly broken it needed steel rods inserted.

Mr Wilson told the court he also suffered a punctured lung and brain injuries, which had affected his memory.

CCTV from the scene of the crash showed Mr Richards started to pull into My Lord’s Bay Road when Mr Wilson’s motorcycle struck his car near the driver’s side door.

One witness, Corte Gibbons, said he was on the phone with Mr Richards when the collision took place.

He told the court he only later discovered that Mr Wilson, his tenant and a family friend, had also been involved.

Another witness, Joel Cassidy, told the court that just before the collision, he was overtaken by two motorcycles travelling fast enough that he thought they were being chased.

Mr Cassidy added: “I looked in my rear-view mirror expecting that someone was chasing them, but no one was there.”

He rounded a corner in time to see one of the motorcycles strike Mr Richards’s car while the second steered behind the car.

Mr Wilson has said he remembered nothing of the collision, and Mr Richards did not give evidence in the trial.

Michael Prime, a British-based traffic collision investigator, appeared as a witness for the defence and told the court he used CCTV footage and measurements to analyse the collision.

Mr Prime estimated that Mr Wilson was travelling at between 73km/h and 86km/h in the moments before the crash — more than double the legal speed limit.

He argued that if Mr Wilson was travelling at less than 50km/h no evasive action would have been needed to avoid the collision.

He said Mr Wilson would have been able to stop before the collision if he had been travelling at less than 59km/h.