The former paddleboard firm owner who caused the deaths of four people on a river in south west Wales has lost a bid to challenge her prison sentence.
Nerys Bethan Lloyd, a 39-year-old ex-police officer from Port Talbot, was jailed for 10 years and six months last year after admitting the gross negligence manslaughter of four people on the Western Cleddau river in Haverfordwest.
Three Court of Appeal judges have now refused her bid to bring an appeal against that sentence, rejecting her lawyer’s argument that it was “manifestly excessive.”
Lady Justice May said it was “not arguable” that the term was excessive, adding that the sentencing judge “clearly had all the mitigating features in mind.”
The four — Paul O’Dwyer, Andrea Powell, Morgan Rogers and Nicola Wheatley — died after the group set off in flood conditions on the river in October 2021.
Several of those who died had close links to the Swansea Bay area. O’Dwyer was from Port Talbot, the same town as Lloyd, while Wheatley was from Pontarddulais. Powell was from Bridgend and Rogers from Merthyr Tydfil.
The group of seven participants, led by Lloyd and co-instructor O’Dwyer, set off after 9am on October 30, 2021, having had no safety briefing beforehand.
There had been heavy rain in the days before, and the court that later sentenced Lloyd heard the river was in flood with a visibly strong current.
The paddleboarders went over a weir and were sucked into a recirculating flow of water — described as similar to a washing machine — from which the ankle leashes attached to their boards made it harder to escape.
O’Dwyer initially got out of the water safely but re-entered in an attempt to rescue the others. He, Rogers and Wheatley died at the scene, while Powell died in hospital about a week later.
The case has moved through the courts over more than a year, and we have followed it at each stage.
In March last year, Lloyd admitted the gross negligence manslaughter of all four paddleboarders when she appeared before Swansea Crown Court.
She was then jailed for 10 years and six months in April, when the court heard she had not been qualified to lead a paddleboard tour of that kind, and the sentencing judge criticised an “abysmal” approach to health and safety.
The judge, Mrs Justice Stacey, said Lloyd’s interest “seemed to be more in an exciting route than safety,” and that she had shown “a blatant disregard for a very high risk of death.”
Lloyd had trained as a firearms officer after joining South Wales Police, and the judge said she would have been “well-versed” in the importance of risk assessments.
It later emerged that Lloyd had been sacked by South Wales Police in November 2021 — a month after accepting a caution for fraud relating to a vehicle insurance claim — over a matter the force said was unrelated to the paddleboarding deaths.
At the sentencing, the families of those who died gave impact statements describing the depth of their loss, and the judge paid tribute to their “dignity and courage in the midst of overwhelming grief.”
A Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor said Lloyd had not been qualified to take inexperienced paddleboarders out in such conditions, while a Dyfed-Powys Police senior officer described the tragedy as “completely avoidable.”
A Health and Safety Executive inspector said the victims had placed their trust in Lloyd to deliver a safe paddle, but that through her “incompetence, carelessness and complacency” she had failed to assess the obvious risk at the weir.
The refusal of the appeal bid brings to a close the latest stage of a case that has run through the courts since her first court appearances last year.
