Northumberland professor left with bleeding on the brain by driver who had taken cocaine before horror crash
A professor was left seriously injured with brain bleeds when a careless driver who had taken cocaine failed to give way and smashed into her car.
A quiet Friday evening trip to help her partner pick up his car from a local garage in Northumberland ended in horror for Professor Claire Lomax. Self-employed farrier Jack Brown, who was three times the driving limit for a cocaine breakdown product and was not insured, careered into the side of her small Peugeot in his large Nissan Pathfinder at high speed.
Prof Lomax, an expert in clinical psychology at Newcastle University, was left unconscious and suffered two bleeds around the brain, a fractured sternum and concussion. After her partner and Brown got her out of the car, it burst into flames, such was the impact.
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Now Brown, who admitted careless driving causing serious injury, has been given a six month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, with 180 hours of unpaid work and a 12 month driving ban.
Newcastle Crown Court heard it was around 8.30pm on March 3 last year that Prof Lomax was in her Peugeot 208 car on Causey Hill Road, a 60mph single carriageway road in Hexham, travelling back in convoy with her husband, who was in his car. They were heading home to their teenage children when the collision happened.
Judge Amanda Rippon said: "She, familiar with the road, as should you have been, slowed down on her approach to a crossroads on the crest of a hill, because visibility is considerably reduced because of hedges and it's the crest of a hill and a crossroads.
"You were travelling on Yarridge Road, which crosses over her road, at high speed in a Nissan Pathfinder, a very big vehicle. You didn't stop at the give-way sign and struck her car on the driver's side, shunting the car and her down the road."
Prof Lomax was immediately rendered unconscious. Judge Rippon said: "She had to be pulled out of the car by her husband, who had seen this accident unfold with a horror I can't begin to imagine and don't want to."
Brown helped get the victim out of the car, which then caught fire due to the damage it had sustained. Mobile phones could not be found in the chaos and Prof Lomax' husband asked Brown to go and get help.
He instead positioned the man's car in front of his as if to tow it out of a field but then did leave to seek help when the request was repeated.
Local people then came on the scene and the emergency services were called. Judge Rippon said: "I've seen pictures of the Peugeot. To describe it as catastrophically damaged does the pictures no justice. I don't know how she get out of the car."
Judge Rippon told Brown: "Driving is a privilege, it's not a right. It's earned by careful driving, following the laws of the road and not ignoring them.
"That you didn't kill yourself or Prof Lomax that day is pure luck. It could very easily have been different."
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Prof Lomax was left with a fractured sternum, two bleeds around the brain and concussion. She has no recollection of the accidents or the days immediately before and after it.
In a victim impact statement, she said she was left with "frighteningly severe" headaches after her discharge from hospital and had to be prescribed morphine. The professor in clinical psychology was off work for four months and said the bleeds around her brain left her worried about the long term impact due to her knowledge from her work of the effect brain injuries can have.
She was left worrying every time she forgot a word that the crash had impacted her cognitive functioning. She also suffered a bacterial infection and added: "One of the worst aspects of the injury was I completely lost my sense of taste and smell. I'm relieved this is slowly returning."
She said she couldn't drive for six months which had a big impact given there is no public transport where she lives. She said: "A quiet Friday evening turned my life upside down."
Brown, 29, was originally charged with dangerous driving causing serious injury but prosecutors accepted his guilty plea to careless driving causing serious injury. He was not insured and had three times the legal limit for a breakdown product of cocaine in his system. He was not separately charged with those matters in time "by accident" but the judge said they were aggravating factors.
The court heard people had provided "glowing" references for Brown and Judge Rippon said he appeared distressed in court at hearing of the impact on his victim. He is a self-employed farrier who lives with his parents in a cottage in Haydon Bridge.
Shaun Routledge, defending, said: "He is genuinely remorseful. The remorse and emotional distress is most certainly genuine. It's brought him up short."