Crash victim reveals injuries in protest at driver’s jail term
AN A-LEVEL student has released a hospital bed image in protest against the sentence given to a drink-driver who left him for dead.
Luke Mason, 18, revealed the picture of himself in intensive care to show how close he came to death after being knocked down along with a friend in Middlesbrough by Hadi Hamid, 40.
Mr Mason was left in a coma and with life-changing injuries after Hamid ploughed into him and Matthew Lockwood while he was banned from the roads and over the alcohol limit.
Hamid was jailed for four years after he admitted a charge of causing serious injury by dangerous driving – which has a maximum sentence of five years – but will serve just half, less the time he has spent on remand since the crash in October last year.
Mr Mason said: “I don’t blame the judge for the sentence – the fault is with the criminal justice system – his hands were tied.”
The judge in the case was forced to explain to the victims that he was unable to impose a longer sentence unless the law received “parliamentary attention”.
Mr Mason, who is taking politics, economics, history and religious studies at The King’s Academy Sixth Form in Middlesbrough, and hopes to study at Oxford, is a year behind in his studies. He had to put his life on hold while he received major surgery and intensive treatment for injuries to his spine, collar bone and arm, which now all have metal plates inserted.
Luke also suffered a large wound to his head and multiple abrasions to his face, neck and abdomen, a collapsed lung, blood in his chest cavity, multiple broken ribs and a fractured hip and required treatment in intensive care.
Teesside Crown Court heard that he was put into an induced coma and was in hospital for nine weeks.
Judge Tony Briggs said of his inability to pass a longer sentence on Hamid: “The basic position is, solutions lie in the powers of others.”