A man’s “idiotic” driving led to a crash which resulted in horrific injuries to his girlfriend whose dreams of becoming a jockey have now been jeopardised, a court heard.
Harry Camp, 19, an apprentice engineer, put his foot down after getting annoyed at his then girlfriend’s choice of music, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Kelly Clarke said that Camp was driving a VW Golf and the woman was in the front passenger seat as they travelled from York to Malton on August 14 last year.
After turning off the A64 at Castle Howard onto Amotherby Lane, the victim put on some music which Camp said was “making him feel angry”.
He stepped on the accelerator and began driving “particularly fast”, or, as his now-ex-girlfriend described it, “like an idiot”.
Further along the single-track, narrow road, a female motorist travelling in the opposite direction saw Camp’s Volkswagen speeding towards her.
“The narrow road prevented her from going anywhere and she anticipated (Camp) would pull into the passing place just ahead of her,” added Ms Clarke.
“She stopped, but he continued driving directly towards her at speed.”
Despite there being “no room to do so”, Camp tried to drive around the woman’s vehicle and clipped the edge of the grass verge, causing his car to overturn.
Neither Camp nor the woman in the other vehicle was injured, but his girlfriend, who was knocked unconscious and “stuck upside down” in the upturned vehicle, suffered a bleed on the brain, a broken back and neck and a damaged chest bone.
She was taken to hospital by ambulance to undergo surgery for six separate compression fractures to her vertebrae.
Camp, from Normanby, was arrested at the scene and charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving. He admitted the offence and appeared for sentence.
In a statement read out by the prosecution, the victim, who is in her early 20s and from Old Maltongate, said she had “broken my back in four places and broke my neck in two places”, along with a small brain haemorrhage.
She was fitted with an upper-body back-and-neck brace which she had to wear for several months. This meant that family and friends had to help her with everyday tasks.
She had to take four months off work at a stable yard in Malton and had to rely on statutory sick pay.
“This was one of the lowest moments of my life,” she added.
“I could not sleep and was not eating right.”
She had to postpone her amateur-jockey tests, which she had booked for a week after the accident and had been due to go on a course at the National Horseracing College at the end of the year.
Consultants had advised her not to ride horses for six months after the accident because she was “too fragile” and “still in a lot of pain”.
She had since returned to work on “light yard duty” and had recently started riding again after having physiotherapy, but due to her injuries “my future in the (horse-racing) industry is not certain”.
She had worked in Malton’s racing industry since she left school and her “dream” was to become a jockey, but doctors had told her that she wouldn’t be fully healed for another two years.
In January last year, about seven months before the accident, she broke her back in a riding accident after falling from a horse but had made a full recovery.
Since the car accident, the charity Racing Welfare had raised money for her through the Malton Stables Open Day, where trainers open up their yards to the public. The charity had also given her food vouchers while she was on sick pay and paid for physiotherapy and rehabilitation sessions at the Injured Jockeys Fund’s rehab centre in Malton.
Racing Welfare’s charity housing provider, Racing Homes, provided her with affordable accommodation at the organisation’s property in Malton for young people starting out in racing.
Defence barrister Nick Peacock said that Camp felt “great shame” for what he had done and the relationship was now over.
Camp was currently on an apprentice mechanical-engineering course and was “petrified” of going to prison.
Mr Peacock cited glowing character references which “paint him as an industrious, hard-working young man, someone for whom this sort of behaviour is completely at odds with the way he normally conducts himself”.
Judge Sean Morris told Camp: “This court has to deal with young men driving too fast time and time again…and the consequences can be enormous.
“The lady coming in the opposite direction could have been dead. Your former girlfriend could have been paraplegic: that is what happens when teenagers and young men drive their hot hatches like idiots.
“Fortunately, nobody died, but (the victim) has had a shocking time.”
However, the judge noted that Camp had never been in trouble before, had a clean driving licence, had shown “obvious remorse” and had “good prospects ahead of you as an apprentice”.
He added: “It’s quite clear that this was a one-off; it’s quite clear you are deeply, deeply ashamed and remorseful.”
Mr Morris said for those reasons he could suspend the inevitable jail sentence.
Camp, of Main Street, Normanby, received a 14-month jail sentence suspended for a year. He was ordered to carry out 280 hours of unpaid work “to atone for your stupidity”.
He was banned from driving for two years.
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