Cannabis driver jailed for crash that killed junior doctor

A HABITUAL cannabis user who killed a “truly outstanding” young doctor when he ploughed into his motorcycle while overtaking at 87mph has been jailed for seven years.

Jake Rogers, 22, had already amassed 10 points on his licence in 16 months when he killed Dr Alex Boorman in the high-speed collision.

Rogers’s car flipped over three times after he tried to overtake on an unlit blind bend on the A19 in North Yorkshire last December. He later tested positive for cannabis.

Teesside Crown Court heard how Rogers’s 17-year-old girlfriend, Olivia Thackeray, who warned him to slow down, suffered life-changing injuries in the crash and that his friend Simon Briggs was also seriously hurt.

Judge Simon Bourne-arton QC told him: “Alex Boorman was 27 years old. He was a doctor, he devoted his life to the care of others. That career was taken from him by you.”

Rogers wrote a letter to the judge to express his remorse and apologised to the doctor’s family and to his own.