Mum of two on cannabis left girl brain damaged in horror crash

A DRIVER who took morphine and cannabis before veering on to the wrong side of the road and crashing into another motorist has been jailed for 28 months.

Sylvia Brown, 53, caused life-changing brain injuries to a young woman – then lied to police about what drugs she had taken.

Despite slurring her speech and falling asleep as she spoke to police and paramedics, Brown claimed she had taken nothing stronger than cough syrup on the morning of the accident.

Blood tests later revealed the cocktail of drugs she had taken also included prescription Oramorph and codeine. The mother of two told police the traces of the class B drug came from passive smoking at a party the week before the smash in Cranbrook, Kent.

During her trial Brown admitted she had ‘made a mistake in panic’ and that she was in fact a regular user of cannabis, smoking a joint each night before going to bed. She maintained, however, that she had not consumed the drug on the morning of the accident, or taken her prescription morphine or any codeine.

Brown, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, said the only medicine she had taken was Benylin cough syrup, and told the jury that although she had been ‘ extremely exhausted’, she could not have fallen asleep at the wheel.

Brown’s Honda Civic ploughed into a Mini Cooper convertible being driven by 23-year- old Amy Lawrence at 5pm on November 2, 2015. The Honda, said to be travelling at 40mph, struck the side of Miss Lawrence’s car, forcing it on to the pavement and a grass verge.

It left the keen equestrian with a brain injury which causes her both short and long-term memory loss, mood swings and constant headaches. The court heard she also sustained a hairline fracture to her breastbone, a sprained coccyx, an injury to her ear which has caused permanent tinnitus, and fractures to her left hand which required three operations.

She can no longer ride or drive, and has been unable to return to her job as an accounts administrator at Dulwich Preparatory School in Cranbrook.

Brown’s trial at Maidstone Crown Court took a dramatic turn yester- day when she changed her plea to guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving and was jailed for two years and four months. She was also banned from driving for 50 months.

The court heard no immediate arrangements had been made for the care of her teenage children.

Brown was prescribed the morphine-based painkiller Oramorph two months before the crash. She said she usually took a dose every two to three days. She had told her GP in October that she was anxious and under ‘great physical stress’. Her doctor had warned her that Oramorph could affect her driving ability, the court was told.

Miss Lawrence has no memory of the accident. In a statement to the court, she said: ‘My life has completely changed. Physically and mentally, I am not capable of what I used to be. I have lost so much of what I enjoy. I don’t know if I will ever get my life back.’

Judge Adele Williams said Brown’s decision to drive was ‘grossly irresponsible’. She added: ‘You should not have been driving at all. This has changed a young woman’s life. There has been no proper remorse until today.’

The maximum sentence for causing serious injury by dangerous driving is five years.

‘No proper remorse’