A compassionate widow issued a plea for leniency in court for the motorist convicted of killing her husband.

Kathryn Baker’s husband Kevin died after his motorcycle collided with a car which was turning at Ballaskyr on the main road between Glen Helen and Kirk Michael on Mad Sunday last year.

Following a nine-day trial last week, hospital consultant Dr Philip Windrum was found guilty of causing Mr Baker’s death by careless driving.

But prosecutor James Robinson read out a note from Mr Baker’s widow that he said he had left him speechless as it ’showed human compassion beyond anything I have ever experienced’.

In her note to Deputy High Bailiff Jayne Hughes, Mrs Baker said that she had forgiven the doctor and believed he had been punished enough.

She wrote: ’I don’t know if you are aware that from the outset I asked that no prosecution take place in relation to my husband’s accident and his subsequent death.

’It was and remains my belief that nothing the court can do will change the circumstances.

’Dr Windrum made an error of judgement for which both he and I have to live with the devastating consequences.

’I have forgiven him and bear him no malice. I therefore ask you to pass no sentence on Dr Windrum. Having to live with this experience must be far worse than any punishment you can give him.’

The Deputy High Bailiff said that passing no sentence was not an option open to her.

She said that a community service order was the most appropriate sentence but didn’t rule out other sentencing options.

Mrs Baker, of Foxdale, was in court with her daughter Sian to hear the Deputy High Bailiff deliver her guilty verdict.

Mrs Hughes said: ’Dr Windrum made an error of judgement. No one is suggesting Dr Windrum deliberately drove in the way he did.’

Road racing fan Dr Windrum, of Cooper’s Mill Avenue, Dundonald, Belfast, was on his 16th visit to the TT and had been watching the racing from Ballaskyr Farm with his father Norman.

He was turning right onto the A3, shortly after the roads open car went past, when the collision occurred with a Yamaha bike riden by Mr Baker, who had been watching the racing from Handley’s Corner.

Retired police officer Mr Baker, 69, was treated for his injuries by the public and paramedics at the scene. He was airlifted to Noble’s Hospital but died later.

Dr Windrum, a consultant haematologist specialising in cancer care, told the trial that after the roads open car flashed past, he had got back into his Nissan Juke and carefully moved towards the entrance of the farm lane and checked the road in both directions.

He insisted that as he started to turn right there was nothing in the road and his car was the distance of its bonnet into the road when he first noticed a white helmet approaching the crest of the road some 150m to his right.

He told the court: ’The first thing I saw was a helmet. It was a considerable distance from me at this stage. I thought I had sufficient time to complete my manoeuvre and get into the right hand lane.’

He described the impact as feeling like an explosion and thought he and his father, who was in the front passnger seat, were going to die.

The Deputy High Bailiff rejected conflicting witness accounts about the speed of Mr Baker’s bike and said she was sure that it had been travelling at about the 60mph speed limit and it was impossible and unnecessary to be more accurate.

She said the defendant had a made a number of errors of judgement.

He should have wound down the driver’s window to listen out for approaching traffic, she said, and as soon as he saw the helmet, he ’could and should’ have stopped.

Defence advocate Winston Taylor said that if his client was handed a custodial sentence he would face being struck off or suspended by the General Medical Council.

He said Dr Windrum travelled 40 miles from home to his work in an already understaffed cancer unit and attended a clinic at another hospital 20 miles away once a week.

Dr Windrum was granted bail until his sentencing on August 8