A young woman has been found guilty of causing a pedestrian's death by driving carelessly along a city road.

Rachel Forsyth, 21, knocked down Lillian Morrison as she walked across an out-of-order pedestrian crossing on Queens Road in Aberdeen.

The student failed to see the 79-year-old and only realised she had run someone down when her car windscreen smashed.

Mrs Morrison landed on the bonnet then hit her head on the glass before flying through the air and falling face down on the pavement.

She was on her way home and was only yards away from the sheltered housing complex when the tragedy happened two days after Christmas in 2012.

Forsyth went on trial at the High Court in Aberdeen on Tuesday accused of causing death by driving dangerously while using her mobile phone.

But the charge was yesterday reduced to death by careless driving and the reference to using her phone was deleted by the Crown.

The jury of eight women and six men took just over an hour to find the events management university student guilty by a majority verdict.

Following the verdict, Mrs Morrison's daughter, Phyllis Fraser, said: "We are happy that the right verdict was given and we got justice for our mum."

Several members of the pensioner's family attended the trial throughout the week.

Another relative, who was not named, said after the hearing: "All that the family was really looking for was an acknowledgement of responsibility from the driver and an apology."

Forsyth, of Westhill, in Aberdeenshire, was on her way to work at a squash club in the city when the collision happened when she gave evidence earlier in the week.

She told the court: "I obviously hit a pedestrian."

Defence lawyer David Moggach asked: "When did you first became aware of the pedestrian?"

She replied: "It was when my windshield smashed that I was aware."

She claimed the lights of cars travelling in the opposite direction could have dazzled her.

She said: "It was December so it was very dark and the headlights of the cars were directly facing me the whole way out as well."

The hotel worker initially believed she had collided with a cyclist and turned her black Vauxhall Corsa on to the nearest road and parked the vehicle.

She phoned her work to let them know she could not make her shift and tried to contact her parents.

Other motorists who had stopped at the scene called the emergency services. The court heard the Scottish Ambulance Service was informed of the collision at 4:10pm.

Phone records analysed by police staff revealed that Forsyth had sent a text to her mother from her mobile three minutes before that 999 call.

However, the student said she could not say for sure whether the clock on her phone had been set automatically by the network and was accurate.

The text read: "Got home early. Dog walked and off to work."

Yesterday advocate depute Bruce Erroch urged the jury to convict Forsyth of the charge because her actions fell below what would be expected of a "competent and careful" driver.

He said he could not say that the use of the driver's phone to send the text had contributed to the collision.

It would have taken Forsyth about four-and-a-half minutes to drive from her mother's house to the collision scene.

And Mr Erroch suggested that this could mean that the text was sent when she was driving, albeit two minutes before the collision and not at the collision scene itself.

He told the jury: "That would suggest a rather lax and cavalier attitude to road safety."

Mr Erroch insisted that a driver would have seen a pedestrian standing in front of their car if the motorist had been driving carefully.

Lord Turnbull deferred sentence for background reports until February 27 and disqualified Forsyth from driving in the interim.