Axeman is jailed for leaving trail of damage

A DRUG-FUELLED axeman who left a trail of devastation after mowing down a cyclist in Leeds city centre has been jailed for seven years.

Prosecutor Patricia Doherty said 37-year-old David Riley – who claimed to have suffered a breakdown after an argument at work – deliberately drove his Ford Transit van into cyclist Gonzalo Munoz Lopez on North Street in Leeds city centre at around 5.20pm on February 10. Mr Lopez suffered four broken bones in his right foot.

Minutes later Riley, of Nowell Crescent, Harehills, drove the wrong way along Scott Hall Road in Leeds before deliberately crashing his van into two cars in queuing traffic.

Riley opened the driver’s door of another Ford Transit van at traffic lights and told driver Mark Castle: “Get out, get out or I will hit you with this axe.”

The court heard Riley struck the van’s dashboard numerous times with the axe.

Riley stole the van and a few minutes later few minutes later abandoned it on Otley Road, Headingley.

He tried to get inside a Volvo and two other cars on Otley Road before using the axe to break the lock on a delivery bicycle, which he stole from outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop on Otley Road.

When he handed himself in to police three days later on February 13, Riley told officers that he used cannabis and amphetamine.

Riley admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving, dangerous driving, robbery, theft, threatening a person with a bladed article and failing to stop after an accident.

Jailing Riley for seven years and banning him from driving for four years, recorder Simon Eckersley told him: “Over it appears three or four miles, you left a trail of chaos, devastation and injury.”