Alice Wood: student guilty of killing boyfriend with car

A 23-year-old woman has been found guilty of murdering her fiancé by running him over with her car after a party.

Alice Wood, a philosophy student at the University of Manchester, used her Ford Fiesta as a weapon when she hit her 24-year-old partner Ryan Watson near their home in Rode Heath, Cheshire, at about 11.30pm on 6 May 2022, Chester Crown Court heard.

The jury was told she "lost her temper" following a drunken argument after the couple had been at a party in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent.

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Wood, who had recently received a scholarship to start a master's at Cambridge, denied murder and an alternative count of manslaughter, telling the court her boyfriend's death was a "tragic accident". The student "had a copy of the book 'Meditations'" – a philosophy text by Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius – "under her arm as she was led in handcuffs from the prison van to the court" on the first day of the trial, The Independent reported. 

She was "in tears" during much of her evidence and said she had intended to "scare" Watson because he had threatened her mother, but planned to stop short before hitting him, said the paper.

Wood, who later failed a roadside breath test, had driven Watson's car home from the party, but was then seen on CCTV getting into her own Ford Fiesta. She reversed it towards him, almost hitting him, and then drove towards him a second time, knocking him onto the bonnet. He managed to walk away from the first collision, but Wood drove at him again. 

"This time he did not go over the bonnet – she knocked him clean over, under the vehicle's front end," said prosecutor Andrew Ford KC. After driving around 160 metres with him still under the car, she stopped and told a neighbour: "Please phone an ambulance, I think I've run over my boyfriend."

Wood claimed she didn't realise he was beneath the car, and stopped because she felt the car was not accelerating properly. "It was like stepping into a nightmare because I could see Ryan underneath the car. It was like I was in hell, It didn't seem real," she told the court. 

Watson's family said it had been "so hard" to repeatedly watch the CCTV footage shown in court. "The one person Ryan trusted the most is the person who took his life in such a violent way," they said in a statement. 

Judge Michael Leeming remanded Wood in custody ahead of sentencing on 29 January, warning her that she "may never be released".