A man has been imprisoned for dangerous driving after causing a crash which left his friend paralysed from the waist down.
Callum Davies, 22, of Burnham Road, Latchingdon appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court on Tuesday after he admitted to causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
The court heard that on August 1, 2024, the defendant drove three friends to Southend where they walked along the beach and played in arcades.
In witness statements, the three passengers described his driving on the journey to Southend as “relatively ok”.
However, on the return journey at 11.30pm, the passengers described a change in Davies’ manner of driving.
He was described as holding the steering wheel with two fingers and at times letting go of it, as well as “crazy”, “overconfident and showing off”, and as using a 60mph unlit country road as a “Formula 1 start line”.
The car was travelling along Hammonds Road, Chelmsford when Davies lost control.
The vehicle spun and left the road, flipping onto its roof and coming to a stop 64 metres away from the road in a farmer’s field.
The two female passengers were able to extract themselves from the wreckage after several minutes, while the male passenger had to be cut out of the vehicle and taken to hospital for further treatment.
The victim remained in hospital for two-and-a-half months and has been left paralysed from the chest down.
Hollie Davies, prosecuting, said: “This is a very sad case of a young man driving his friends home from an evening out with catastrophic consequences for one of them because of the defendant’s decision to drive dangerously.
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“It is utterly life altering for a young man who will now spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.”
Ms Davies read the victim’s impact statement in court which detailed how the relationships in his life have become strained, his round-the-clock physical needs and pains, and his relationship with his two-year-old son, who he saw bi-weekly before the crash and has seen only twice since.
He wrote: “I will never help him learn to ride a bike and I can’t play football with him.
“I have to rely on other people to facilitate my relationship with him.
“The crash has ruined my life.”
Alphege Bell, mitigating, said Davies was genuinely remorseful of his actions and has experienced a deep psychological impact.
He added Davies had lost his job that very morning and was feeling “aggrieved, a little bit lost, a little bit bereft”.
Recorder Benjimin Burgher said he had seen pictures of the serious damage to the car and understood the victim now has lifelong dependency on care, and that his relationship with his son had been devastated.
Callum Davies, 22, of Burnham Road, Latchingdon was sentenced to two years and four months’ imprisonment and will be suspended from driving for two years.
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