Driver ‘used car as weapon’ to run down man after row

MOTORIST HAD NOT PASSED TEST AND WAS BANNED

AN argument outside a pub led to an irate drinker deliberately running down a man on the pavement.

Saul Sposato, who has not passed a driving test and who had been banned from the roads 11 days previously, turned the vehicle around and returned, trying to hit more people on the opposite footpath.

The victim, who was knocked flat in Hall Croft, Shepshed, was said to have suffered a cut leg.

He limped into the Red Lion pub and told staff what had happened.

Sposato, 27, drove past the scene a third time, but did not mount the kerb on that occasion, before driving away, at about 12.30am on June 27 last year.

Laura Pitman, prosecuting, told Leicester Crown Court a bar worker took down the defendant’s registration number and gave it to police.

She told the officers the driver had been in the pub “most of the evening” and had been “drinking quite heavily”.

Miss Pitman said: “He was deliberately using his car as a weapon by mounting the pavement twice.”

Police traced the vehicle to a sister of the defendant, as she was identified as the insurance policy holder.

But she knew nothing about the policy being taken out in her name and did not own the vehicle.

The prosecutor said: “Inquiries revealed the person who took out the insurance in the sister’s name was this defendant, who was using the car for himself despite being banned from driving 11 days earlier.

He was arrested the following day and gave no response when questioned.

“He was a provisional licence holder, without valid insurance.”

On October 29, 2020, Sposato received eight points for having no insurance.

He was prosecuted in mid-June 2021 for having no insurance and driving otherwise than in accordance with a licence – when he was banned from driving for six months.

Sposato, of Aikman Avenue, New Parks, Leicester, admitted dangerous driving, driving when disqualified and having no insurance.

Samreen Akhtar, mitigating, said when the defendant left the pub, with family and friends, he claimed other people began racially abusing his brother-in-law and Sposato became involved in the altercation.

She said: “He knows it doesn’t justify his actions, which he attributes to anger and fear. He accepts he shouldn’t have taken the law into his own hands and should have handled it differently.”

Miss Akhtar said Sposato was a carer for his mother who depended heavily on his help.

He had also suffered physical difficulties following an accident involving a fall from a height.

Sentencing, Recorder Michael Burrows QC said: “There appears to have been no issue in the pub but outside there was an exchange of words with other people and you got involved in an altercation.

“I take into account there was an element of provocation and your group were subjected to abuse.

“I have to consider whether you represent a danger, and from these offences you are a risk of causing serious harm to people.

“But the pre-sentence report states you have a low risk of reoffending.

“You’re a carer and if you went into custody it would have a harmful impact on your mother.”

The recorder said the defendant had come “very close” to immediate custody.

Sposato was given a 10-month jail sentence, suspended for two years.

He was placed on a six-month 7pm to 7am electronically monitored home curfew and ordered to attend 19 sessions of a thinking skills programme.

He was banned from driving for three years.