Driver’s appeal against sentence fails

Lucas James Hazel has never had a driver’s licence but that didn’t stop him driving.

He crashed a Subaru into a house after driving at 150kmh in a 50kmh speed zone in Hastings, and legged it – leaving his two injured passengers in the car.

Then, during ‘‘prolonged violence’’ against a female in a moving car, he climbed from the driver’s seat into the back seat of the car and followed the woman when she jumped out.

He also assaulted the woman outside

Hawke’s Bay Hospital. She ran inside but he grabbed her around the head, dragged her out, lifted her and pushed her down some stairs.

He pleaded guilty to all the charges except one alleging he and another man stole a woman’s handbag in December 2018. A judge found him guilty of that.

The victim’s family members tracked the bag via the cellphone that was in it.

The two men ran off when they were asked to return the bag, but only the other man was caught at the time.

The cellphone had been used to film the woman’s father when he was terminally ill. Her father is now dead, and the phone was not recovered or returned, and the recording was lost.

Hazel said the two years and five months’ jail term he received was too long for the charge of reckless driving causing injury, the two domestic assaults, and the handbag theft.

He appealed to the High Court against the sentence but Justice Christine Grice dismissed the appeal, saying the sentence was ‘‘well within’’ what was appropriate. She said the reckless driving was the most serious charge and the circumstances ‘‘highly aggravated’’.