Mike Lynch's co-defendant in US trial dies in UK road accident, lawyer says

LONDON (Reuters) -Stephen Chamberlain, once Mike Lynch's co-defendant in the U.S. fraud trial over the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard, has died after a road accident left him critically injured, days before Lynch went missing off the coast of Sicily, his lawyer said on Monday.

Chamberlain - Autonomy's former vice president of finance alongside chief executive Lynch - was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning and had been placed on life support, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier on Monday.

In a statement, Chamberlain's lawyer, Gary Lincenberg, who described him as a "dear client and friend", said he had died after being "fatally struck" by a car while out running.

Lynch was one of six people reported missing after a luxury yacht was struck by an unexpectedly violent storm and sank off Sicily early on Monday.

Chamberlain faced the same charges of fraud and conspiracy as his former boss for allegedly scheming to inflate the value of Autonomy, then Britain's largest software firm, before it was sold.

Both the men were acquitted of all 15 charges by a jury in San Francisco in June.

After leaving Autonomy in 2012, Chamberlain worked as chief operating officer for cybersecurity firm Darktrace and volunteered as a finance director for Cambridge United soccer club, according to his LinkedIn profile.

"He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity, and we deeply miss him," Lincenberg said. "He fought successfully to clear his good name, which lives on through his wonderful family."

Cambridgeshire Police appealed for witnesses after a collision between a pedestrian and a car in Newmarket Road in Stretham, Cambridgeshire, saying a man in his 50s had been taken to hospital with serious injuries.

A police spokesperson said on Monday there was no update on the pedestrian's condition.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle, Alistair Smout and Andrew MacAskill; Additional reporting by Catarina Demony; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Sandra Maler)