A drink driver has been jailed for 3 years after ploughing his van into a pedestrian, merely 2 hours after he was driven home by the police.
The driver, Shaun Sainty was travelling in the early hours of the morning to continue a fight from that same day.
Driving after drinking, Sainty ploughed into pedestrian William Coulter, catapulting him over fence.
Coulter suffered breaks to a leg, hip, arm and 3 ribs as well as deep cuts to his back and legs.
Sainty entered guilty pleas to causing serious injuries by dangerous driving, drink driving, driving without insurance, driving whilst disqualified and failing to stop after an accident.
The Judge in the case stated: “This was a horrific piece of driving.”
The Judge continued: “You deliberately chose to drive a vehicle on a road in flagrant disregard to a court order, after consuming so much alcohol you could barely walk.
“And there was the unfortunate Mr Coulter who was doing nothing wrong, and you rode that vehicle straight into him. I do not sentence you on the basis that you realised you had hit him, but that is perhaps indicative of the amount of alcohol you had consumed.
“He is still in a wheelchair and it is merciful he did not lose his life. A motor weapon can be a serious weapon and in the hands of someone like you, an intoxicated driver, it becomes a lethal weapon.”
Coulter continues to be in a wheelchair and is undergoing counselling. Furthermore, before the accident he had just secured new employment, for which it now seems unlikely that he will be able to take up.
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