A drugged danger driver who did 70mph in a 20mph zone and caused a head-on collision by taking a roundabout the wrong way during a police pursuit has been jailed.
Craig Stoker was behind the wheel of a friend's Audi on October 14 last year when officers in an unmarked car saw him driving fast and erratically on the A1231 and A19 in Sunderland and and they followed it. They pulled him over and he stopped but after being told to turn his engine off, he drove off, mounting a path as he did so.
There was then a chase in which he reached 70mph in 20mph residential streets to try to escape. He then turned his lights off and as he approached traffic at a major roundabout, he went around it the wrong way, crashing head-on into a Ford Focus, moments after the police had aborted the pursuit on safety grounds.
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Even the collision did not stop him and he drove off with a rear door swinging open, went up a grass verge onto a petrol station forecourt and re-joined the road, again driving on the wrong side of it and narrowly missing another car.
He then completely lost control and collided with a fence at the back of a house before trying to run off but he was detained by police. Sentencing him at Newcastle Crown Court, Judge Christopher Prince said: "That was truly appalling and horrific driving. It's by pure good fortune no-one was killed or seriously injured by your actions.
"The risk of death or serious injury was extremely high."
Inside the car, police found bags of cocaine and an extendable baton and tests showed Stoker was above the drug driving limit for cannabis.
Stoker, 25, of Brockley Street, Town End Farm, Sunderland, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, driving otherwise that in accordance with a licence, having only ever had a provisional licence, no insurance, failing to stop, failing to report an accident, drug driving, possessing an offensive weapon and possessing cocaine. He was jailed for a total of 14 months and banned from driving for a year.
Jamie Adams, defending, said he had been affected by an attack when he was 13 and added: "There a proper family structure and support which is helping him to be in a far better place than he was at the time."
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