Pontypool driver left boy in hospital with fractured skull

South Wales Argus

3 days ago

Liam Collins, 36, from Pontypool had been speeding before losing control of his silver Ford Focus on Lasgarn Lane in the Trevethin area of the town.
The defendant, who has 37 previous convictions for 111 offences, had given two boys a lift after meeting them outside a shop where he had just bought bottles of beer.
Emily Jermyn, prosecuting, told Cardiff Crown Court that Collins had already been drinking.
'The boys were under the impression he was intoxicated and his eyes were red,' she said.
'The boys told him to slow down, but the defendant kept going faster and faster.
'They describe him as flying over speed bumps and when they came to a bend, he told them, 'Watch this!'
'The car then flipped over and landed on its roof.'
His victim spent three nights at the Grange University Hospital in Cwmbran being treated for a fracture to the back of his skull following the incident on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
When Collins was arrested at home, he tested positive for drink driving with 99 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of blood.
The legal limit is 80 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of blood.
The defendant gave a no comment interview at the police station.
Two months later on Wednesday, January 29, he was caught driving whilst disqualified in a Fiat 500 car with false plates in Cwmbran.
Collins, of no fixed abode, admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving, dangerous driving, driving whilst disqualified, drink driving, fraudulently using a registration mark and driving with no insurance.
His previous convictions include aggravated vehicle taking, dangerous driving and drink driving.
Julia Cox representing him said her client was in danger of becoming 'institutionalised' as a result of spending his life in and out of prison.
She told the court the defendant has 'unresolved trauma and grief' after losing his mother while a teenager and, more recently, his sister.
Collins' girlfriend is pregnant and he will become a father in October, Miss Cox added.
His barrister accepted he has an 'horrific record for driving offences'.
'You ignored pleas to slow down and a crash was inevitable,' Judge Daniel Williams told the defendant.
'You chose to put two children at risk as a result of your outrageously bad driving.'
Collins was jailed for three years and four months and banned from driving for five years following his release from prison.
He must sit and extended driving test and pay a victim surcharge.