A DRIVER left the scene after a pensioner was knocked down and killed by his bus on a zebra crossing, an inquest was told.

Joyce Rigby, 61, of Fairfield Street, Accrington, died of multiple injuries after being struck by the Pilkingtons bus at Accrington bus station, Peel Street, on October 8 last year.

When questioned by solicitor Safton Kwasnick, representing Mrs Rigby's family, PC Simon Lynch agreed that in police statements driver Roy Harris had not acknowledged seeing Mrs Rigby either before or after the accident.

He also said that the driver left the bus and was one or two streets away from the accident scene and had rung his wife before police took him in for questioning.

Witnesses at the inquest in Blackburn, said Mrs Rigby, a retired cotton mill worker, had been walking over the crossing.

The inquest was told the bus turned a corner and hit her and she then fell under the wheels.

In a police statement read in court by PC Lynch, Mr Harris said there had been an incident moments before the accident when one of the other drivers had lost her money bag but that it had not made him late for his bus run.

He said he had been driving around the corner when he had been distracted by somebody shouting either "Oy" or "Roy". Then the bus struck Mrs Rigby.

Mr Harris, 44, of Bolland Close, Clitheroe, has been charged with driving without due care and attention. He is due to appear before Hyndburn magistrates on June 17.