A cocaine-fuelled van driver who killed a 21-year-old university graduate when he crashed into her Uber cab while he drove on the wrong side of the dual carriageway has been jailed for 14 years.
A maximum sentence? This must have been a very egregious case...
Loveday will serve two-thirds of the sentence before he is released on licence.
Oh. Maybe not.
The judge also disqualified Loveday from driving for 19 years and four months from Thursday.
And that's almost a slap in the face for the victims, because...
Loveday has been before the courts since he was 16, having been convicted of 81 offences on 54 occasions between 2000 and 2022, the court heard. His previous convictions include aggravated vehicle taking, wounding, affray and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
At the time of the offence, he did not have a driving licence, was uninsured to drive the van and was wanted for breaching court orders.
Loveday has never passed a driving test, the court heard.
I'd say it was beyond belief, but really, is it?
Ellis Williams, district crown prosecutor with the CPS, said: 'This sentence reflects the severity of Loveday's offending. He chose to indulge in a dangerous high speed vehicle chase, which tragically ended in the death of Grace Payne and left Sundar Ali with serious injuries.
'Nothing can bring Grace back but I hope this sentence goes some way to comfort her family at this difficult time.'
If I was her family, I might be thinking a few more severe sentences earlier in his criminal career might have been more use, and might have meant he wasn't free to kill on the roads...
And I'll wager that before he was 16 he SHOULD have been in the courts but they tried their best to keep him out of them. After all, all social workers are taught that if you go to prison as a 'child', you're much more likely to end up there as an adult.
ReplyDeleteSo they don't send them any more.
Alas, no one taught them that correlation isn't causation, and that the reason they ended up in prison as adults was the same reason they went there as juveniles - because they were criminals.
The system starts to fall down when Mr Plod can't be bothered to investigate 'petty' crime.
ReplyDeleteTrivial offences, like burglary and theft, are often ignored completely, leaving rising criminals to become emboldened (and educated) by plod and State indifference. The everyday stressors and crimes affecting ordinary, honest citizens, were never the concern of those living a more luxurious life in gated communities...out of the reach of common crime.
A few criminal trials and obligatory let-offs later, the young offender graduates and his new status creates a valuable commodity. 'Premium clients' are very much sought after by criminal lawyers; their Green Form club and the associated bandwagons.
And who pays for it all?
"And I'll wager that before he was 16 he SHOULD have been in the courts but they tried their best to keep him out of them."
ReplyDeleteWhich was clearly more than he did, and why should he have bothered?
"Alas, no one taught them that correlation isn't causation, and that the reason they ended up in prison as adults was the same reason they went there as juveniles - because they were criminals."
I'm betting this chap's eventual fate was written in his familial history in big flashing neon letters.
"The system starts to fall down when Mr Plod can't be bothered to investigate 'petty' crime."
Yes, the much derided 'broken window' theory still holds true.