Victim: ‘Future appears bleak’

A DAD left with catastrophic lifechanging injuries by a danger driver doctor who was drunk at the wheel has hit out at the “disgraceful” decision not to lock her up.

Wesley Hall was driving carefully along a 30mph road when, as he rounded a bend, a Land Rover Freelander suddenly smashed into the front of his small VW Up.

Knocked out by the impact, when he came round he was immediately in agony and it was clear he had been seriously injured.

Eight months later, the 36-year-old dad is continuing to pay the price, physically, emotionally and financially, for what he branded the “selfish act” of Dr Julia Morch-Siddall.

The highly-respected consultant anaesthetist had downed four-and-ahalf cans of Stella Artois as she “selfmedicated” and contemplated killing herself.

But it was innocent Mr Hall who paid the heaviest price for her actions.

Finally out of a wheelchair after suffering multiple fractures to his feet, the father-of-three hobbled into Newcastle Crown Court with the aid of a walking stick, hoping to see the woman responsible locked up.

But after Morch-Siddall walked free on a suspended sentence, Mr Hall, of North Shields, could not hide his disgust. And he revealed how he had to cancel plans to take his partner to Florida to propose to her.

“The sentence is a disgrace in my opinion,” he said. “I feel if it had been any other member of the public and not a doctor, she would have been facing jail time right now.

“I would have felt better if she got locked up. She could have got a fiveyear sentence yet she walks away with nothing. She had nearly five cans.”

Mr Hall said he had just dropped his children off and was heading home when the accident happened on the A692, near Sunniside, Gateshead.

“I was coming down the hill and she just went bang, straight into me,” he recalled. “I would have been dead if I’d turned away because of how her car hit mine.”

Mr Hall, who was an IT consultant with a sports magazine, has now lost his job due to the amount of time he had to take off sick.

And he’s been left frustrated at his inability to do the things he used to with his young children.

He said: “It’s the little things like putting socks and shoes on, I can’t bend down to do it.

“I can’t go running after them. I’m never going to get back to normal, I’m stuck with a lifelong injury.”

Mr Hall went into the witness box during the sentencing hearing to read a statement setting out the consequences of the crash, saying he has been in “extreme pain” and felt he was left with no dignity. He added: “The future appears bleak.”

Mr Hall said he was due to take his partner to Florida in April to ask her to marry him but had to cancel the trip due to his injuries.

He’s had several operations and hours of physio and has now developed back pain due to the unnatural way he has been walking.

He said: “I’m still in a large amount of pain and have to take morphine daily.”