Kentish Express Ashford & District
Wrong-way M20 crash driver jailed
Fifty-hour trip across Europe with little rest
A factory worker drove the wrong way along the M20 at 80mph – after making a 50-hour trip from Poland with no food and little sleep.
As he headed towards Ashford, Krzysztof Stopko bizarrely did a “juddering U-turn” as stunned motorists watched in horror.
Then, ignoring the warnings from other drivers, the 35-yearold travelled for two and a half miles between junctions 10 and 11 towards oncoming vehicles.
Some vehicles managed to swerve away but Stopko’s Seat Leon car eventually smashed into a Skoda driven by Phillipa Piper as she and boyfriend Sean Bowman headed to Ashford to buy an outfit for a friend’s wedding.
Seafarer Ms Piper suffered multiple fractures and was confined to a wheelchair for weeks after the smash in April and Mr Bowman has also been unable to work since.
But now a judge has heard that Stopko – who claimed not to have eaten during the trip and to have drunk only one can of Red Bull – could remember nothing of the crash after being injured.
Neither could he explain why he did the U-turn while heading to his home in Basingstoke after arriving that morning in Dover on a ferry from France.
Now Judge Heather Norton has jailed him for 32 months after telling the couple he hit, who were sitting in the public gallery, that it would seem like “a paltry sentence”.
She said she was restricted by a maximum five-year term for causing injury by dangerous driving, which Stopko admitted, and therefore was entitled to a reduction.
Prosecutor Craig Evans told Canterbury Crown Court that Stopko, who has lived in the UK for 11 years, had visited his home country in March, returning the following month.
He drove across Poland, through Germany, Belgium, Holland and into France to catch a ferry to the UK from Dunkirk, arriving in France at 8.30am on Wednesday, April 6.
He later told police that after spending a day sight-seeing in France he boarded an overnight ferry to Kent – a 50-hour trip with no food and little sleep.
Judge Norton told him: “You drove back from Poland through a number of countries with only one stop. When you were on the ferry you didn’t sleep.
“At Dover you stopped in a layby for some hours but on your own admission you did not sleep or eat. In the course of that journey you didn’t eat or sleep properly for 50 hours.
“Deprivation of food, drink and adequate rest for that length of time is in itself dangerous when you get behind a wheel.”
She added that he had driven at up to 80mph, ignoring obvious warnings for a prolonged period of time.
The judge was then shown CCTV footage from three cars revealing Stopko travelling at speed in the opposite carriageway.
She said: “That was as serious as it could possibly get, causing an obvious risk of serious injury, if not death, to other road users.
“How it is you managed to avoid more carnage than you did cause is hard to understand. The accident was inevitable, causing life-changing injuries to the two victims, causing them extreme mental and physical injuries.”
She banned Stopko from driving for five years.
‘The accident was inevitable, causing life-changing injuries to the two victims’
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