TV remote killer has prison sentence reduced

A man whose wife died by a "fluke" chance when a TV remote he threw towards her hit her head had his jail sentence reduced by the Court of Appeal today.

Electrical engineer Paul Harvey, who killed 48-year-old Gloria Laguna when the remote struck her on a weak artery near her neck, had his prison term cut from three years to 21 months. He could be released in about two weeks.

Harvey, now 47, of Euston, was sentenced at the Old Bailey in December after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

Ms Laguna, a former American diplomat in India, had a rare condition which neither she nor her husband knew about. They had been arguing when Harvey lost his temper and threw the remote in her direction — landing on the spot where she had a weakness in a vertebral artery. She died from a brain haemorrhage as Harvey tried to give her the kiss of life.

Allowing his appeal against the length of his sentence, Mrs Justice Rafferty said: "It seems to us that this is a genuinely single set of circumstances, extraordinary in its coincidences. That being so, we are just persuaded that three years was too long."