Crash victim who lost foot is angry criminal is walking free
A man who caused a crash that cost a motorbike rider his foot is to be freed from jail two days after being sentenced - a decision the victim has called ‘‘a joke’’.
Doctors were unable to save Trevor Collins’ foot after his motorbike was hit by a car that crossed the centre line of State Highway 3 in Taranaki in December 2016, throwing him 15 metres through the air and smashing his leg in seven places.
The driver, Joel Jonothan Broughton, a patched member of the Nomads gang who has served more than 50 jail terms, fled the scene and it took months before police could locate and charge him.
On Monday the 38-year-old was sentenced by Judge Chris Sygrove in the New Plymouth District Court to a total of 14 months imprisonment for charges including careless driving causing injury and failing to stop to ascertain injury, after a 25 per cent discount for pleading guilty.
However because Broughton had already spent six months and three weeks in custody on remand he will be released from jail on Wednesday - a sentence Collins called ’’absolute rubbish’’.
‘‘Unfortunately the justice system has let everybody down apart from Joel Broughton,’’ he said.
‘‘The guy is a career criminal and just because he says ’I’m guilty’ he gets 25 per cent knocked off.’’
He said the police had done a fantastic job but the court system had let him down.
‘‘The guy is just a nasty piece of work, he’s trouble and he costs the taxpayer thousands upon thousands of dollars every year.’’
Broughton also appeared on unrelated charges of receiving stolen property, possession of offensive weapons - five knives, a hammer and a metal baton - possession of cannabis and failing to stop for police.
‘‘What happened to me has been completely overlooked because they don’t want him to serve too long because it might hurt his feelings,’’ Collins said. ‘‘I’m very angry, very bitter and very upset about it.’’
Collins had been riding to work on December 8, between Waitara and Bell Block, when he was hit.
Initially Broughton denied he was driving but in court he admitted the charges and witnesses who were in the car told police he had fallen asleep.
Sygrove said the men drove off and later Broughton and his associates had wiped the vehicle down to remove any fingerprints.
The failing to stop to ascertain injury charge had a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment but Sygrove only apportioned 12 months of Broughton’s sentence to it.
In the end doctors were not able to save Collins’ foot and after watching it die and turn black he made the difficult decision to have it amputated below the knee, 11 days after the crash.
He said the crash had turned his and his wife Lisa’s lives upside down.
‘‘I have only just started now being able to spend any longer than half-an-hour on my leg.’’
‘‘I’ve had to rely on my wife and other people around me for so much that I would normally be able to do successfully on my own.
‘‘After the crash obviously I couldn’t do anything, my wife had to work full time, she had to come home and run around after me, treat me and support me.’’
The crash had also taken a financial toll on the couple who estimate it had cost them more than $16,000, but Broughton wasn’t ordered to pay any reparation because he couldn’t afford it.
Collins said while the couple were slowly rebuilding their lives nothing could ever compensate them for the ordeal they’d been through.
‘‘I’m not going to grow my leg back in 12 months or ever.
‘‘We are by no means and never will be back to what we were.’’