Mike Lynch colleague Stephen Chamberlain hit by car while running, which he took up after fraud case
A businessman who died after being hit by a car while out running had taken up the sport after he was charged with fraud in the US alongside a tech billionaire, an inquest has heard.
Stephen Chamberlain, 52, died from a "traumatic head injury" at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge three days after being hit on the A1123 in Stretham, Cambridgeshire, in August 2024.
He was an associate of tech tycoon Mike Lynch, who died just days beforehand when his superyacht, the Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily.
Mr Chamberlain was crossing a road between two parts of a bridleway when he was struck by a car that had crested a humpback bridge.
In a statement to the inquest, his daughter Ella described her father as the "perfect role model in every way", while his son Teddy said he showed mental and physical strength "beyond anything I could imagine" and he was "so proud to be his son".
Mr Chamberlain's widow Karen Chamberlain said in a statement that her husband had taken up running after he was charged with fraud.
Mr Chamberlain was the co-defendant in Mr Lynch's US trial, and both were cleared last year of conducting a massive fraud over the sale of software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
HP acquired the Cambridge-based company, which Mr Lynch founded in 1996, for £8.35bn but later wrote down the value by £6.68bn and asked the US justice department to investigate fraud.
Mr Chamberlain was a former vice-president of finance at Autonomy and was accused of artificially inflating its revenues and making false and misleading statements to auditors, analysts and regulators in 2018.
Both he and Mr Lynch were found not guilty in June 2024 after a trial in San Francisco, California.
"He discovered it [running] helped him mentally stay calm and focus on what was ahead," Mrs Chamberlain said in a statement read by a lawyer.
Her husband would "meticulously spend hours planning his routes" and competed in ultra-distance races.
He was "safety conscious" and only wore one earbud while he ran, which was the case on the day he was hit, she said.
She added that on the day of the crash, Mr Chamberlain had planned to run 17 miles, starting in Ely and ending in Longstanton, Cambridgeshire, and was just over six miles in when the crash happened.
The coroner directed on Tuesday that the female driver of the car should not be named.
In a statement summarised by area coroner Caroline Jones, she said that she saw Mr Chamberlain looking to his left, away from her, only looking to his right just before the collision, adding she "braked hard" and steered away but the front offside of the car collided with him.
Grahame Cornwall, a motorbike rider who witnessed the collision, said in a statement that Mr Chamberlain was thrown "approximately 15 feet" in the air and added he did not believe the driver would have seen anything until she was on top of the rise of the bridge.
PC Ian Masters said it was "not an ideal crossing point by any stretch of the imagination" and said it was his view that the crash was "not an avoidable collision".
The coroner concluded Mr Chamberlain died as the result of a road traffic collision, and said she shared the family's concerns that the humpback bridge is an "irredeemable barrier" to visibility for pedestrians and other road users.
She said she would write to Cambridgeshire County Council to request more information before deciding whether a report to help prevent future deaths was needed.
However, in a statement outside court read by a lawyer, the family said they "still have questions unanswered".
They said they will invite the police to refer the case to the Crown Prosecution Service for consideration.
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