Drink driver was on wrong side of road when he seriously injured young motorist in Selston
A drink driver who was high on cannabis and travelling on the wrong side of the road when he seriously injured a young motorist in Selston has been jailed.
Rory Helps was cresting a blind hill on Alfreton Road in his white Audi A3 when 19-year-old Savanah Ibbeson saw him at 10.15pm on June 6, last year said Cameron Byrne, prosecuting.
She moved into the other carriage just as he did exactly the same thing. When she tried to swerve back to her original lane the two cars collided.
Both Helps' Audi and his victim's red Suzuki came to rest in the hedgerow.
Police found a bag of cannabis in the glove box and a "weed pen" while he smelled strongly of alcohol.
As he was taken to the hospital, Helps, aged 28, told them: "I have done it. I take full responsibility. I f***ed up. I forgot to tell you, I picked up a half an ounce of weed yesterday."
Nottingham Crown Court heard he drank five to seven pints of alcohol and took cannabis earlier that day.
Ms Ibbeson was left with a fractured right collarbone, right wrist and finger, damage to her pelvis and abdomen, scars on her lower torso which are likely to be permanent, and a partially-collapsed left lung.
Her injuries left her in pain for several months, "made day to day life more difficult," and delayed her from completing a college course in joinery.
Speaking after the hearing, Ms Ibbeson, from Jacksdale, said: “It really felt like he was trying to target me. That's what it felt like.”
Catherine Picardo, mitigating, said Helps, who has no previous convictions, deserved full credit for his early guilty pleas.
She said he had been dealing with “some very difficult emotional issues” after attending a family gathering “when he made the stupid decision to drink and take drugs.”
Helps, of Wycliffe Road, Alfreton, admitted drink driving, causing serious injury by dangerous driving, driving while unfit through drugs, and possession of class B drugs when he appeared at Mansfield Magistrates Court, on December 16.
Jailing him for 22 months on Tuesday, Judge Steven Coupland told him: "You, with far too much drink and drugs onboard, drove in a way that caused serious and lasting injuries to someone else."