A driver has admitted killing a 12-year-old boy in a hit-and-run crash as he made his way home from school.
Latvian national Dolars Aleksanders was extradited to the UK last month and charged with causing death by dangerous driving, following the death of Keaton Slater in Coventry in 2024.
The 23-year-old appeared at Warwick Crown Court via a virtual link from HMP Dovegate on Thursday and only spoke to identity himself and enter his guilty plea.
He is due to be sentenced on 13 November. Aleksanders’ defence lawyer Darron Whitehead said no bail application would be made.
It comes after Aleksanders struck the Coventry schoolboy with his black BMW 330 on Radford Road on 14 June 2024.
At the time of the incident, West Midlands Police said there were four people in the car, which was driving “well above” the speed limit when it hit Keaton.
A reward of £10,000 was also offered up by Crimestoppers for information that led to Aleksanders’ arrest.
It was later discovered that the defendant had fled to Latvia where efforts to extradite him started soon after he was named by police as a person of interest.
After evading West Midlands Police for more than two years, he was flown into Gatwick Airport on Wednesday and was then transported to a custody block in the West Midlands.
Crown Prosecution Service spokesman Ben Samples said British and Latvian authorities, as well as international agencies, had worked closely together to “bring Mr Aleksanders back to face proceedings in a UK court”.
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