VIOLENCE & OTHER CRIMES COMMITTED BY SELF-STYLED 'CELEBRITIES' , 'PROFESSIONAL' FOOTBALLERS AND SUPPORTERS
COUNT 9
Disgraced serious drunken-driver Terry Yorath, Manager, Leeds United Football Club
DISTRICT JUDGE DAVID KITSON
LEEDS MAGISTRATES COURT
Football boss Terry Yorath was spared jail despite mowing-down a woman while THREE TIMES OVER THE DRINK-DRIVE LIMIT. But a judge’s decision to show mercy was labelled a ‘disgrace’. His victim, Raziya Aslam, 27, said Yorath was ‘selfish and
irresponsible’, while campaigners said the former Wales manager should have been jailed. Miss Aslam suffered a shattered pelvis when Yorath, 54, ploughed into her in his X-type Jaguar as she walked home from a karate class. Yorath, who had been on a heavy drinking session, lost control of his sports car on the A61 in Leeds and smashed into the central reservation before mowing her down. But he was fined just £500 and handed a community rehabilitation order. Miss Aslam said after the case at Leeds Magistrates Court: “It was such a selfish, irresponsible and dangerous thing to do. He was putting his own life at risk, as well as other people’s. Drink-driving makes him a threat to himself and to the public. He should be counting his blessings because he walks away with his life intact, while this will affect me forever.”
Mike Jobbings, chairman of the Campaign Against Drink Driving, said: “It is an absolute disgrace that this man has been let off with a slap on the wrist. Jail was the only answer. With that amount of alcohol in his body, Yorath could have killed several people.” Yorath, who played for Leeds United in the 70s and is the father of ITV sports presenter Gaby Logan, was found to have 120 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath after
the crash on 24th June 2004, THREE AND A HALF TIMES THE LEGAL
LIMIT of 35. He admitted drink-driving and driving without due care, and
faced up to six months jail.
But Yorath, of Leeds, escaped heavier punishment, after the court heard that he turned to drink when his 33-year marriage to wife Christine, 53, ended. District Judge David Kitson was told that his life had been ‘beset by tragedy’, including the death of his son Daniel, who dropped dead with a heart defect aged 15 while playing football in 1992. The judge told Yorath that his crime merited jail, but his remorse, personal problems and guilty plea had spared him. Yorath, now assistant boss at League One club Huddersfield Town, was also banned from driving for 30 months and must attend a course for drink-drivers. Richard Manning, defending, said: “He is very keen that he does get some help.” Afterwards, Yorath told the Daily Express: “People should feel sorry for the girl, not me. What I did was so stupid. I feel very ashamed and I let my family down. I will never drink and drive again.” Miss Aslam, from Leeds, who is still off work and on crutches, said of the crash: “I didn’t stand a chance in the middle of the blur. I wondered if I would ever walk again.”
(Author’s note: You have probably noticed the all-pervading theme and scenario running through most of what you have read in the book so far. In the public galleries of crown courts and magistrates courts throughout the land, sit cripples in wheelchairs, widows and widowers dressed in black, with sobbing children at home desperate to know why Daddy or Mummy isn’t coming home any more. In stark contrast to that, seated in huge, comfortable chairs with a backdrop of crested oak-panelled walls, sit the Judiciary. Their eyes and ears are hanging on every word leaving the lips of the defence counsel or solicitor, on his or her feet before them.
Their handkerchiefs or official paper tissues are close at hand, dabbing at their eyes, together with jugs of iced lemon-water, as they struggle to contain themselves from shedding tears of anguish, as the terrible tales of woe unfold. By the time every last detail has been elucidated at great length, to include that the defendant’s cat aged 16 yrs died on the day of the offence and that the washing blew off the line and had to be relaundered, which temporarily upset the balance of the defendant’s mind, causing pre-occupation and distraction from the driving matter in hand, the judge or magistrates haveforgotten every word of the Victim's Crime Impact Statement, hospital and undertakers’ bills, or the fact that the cyclist left for dead in a pool of blood in the gutter, by that totally irresponsible person sitting in the dock, preparing for jail with a toothbrush in the pocket, nearly didn’t make it. When WILL the Judiciary in this country knuckle down properly and restore the balance, so that law-abiding victims’ human rights take preference over those of criminal offenders? In this particular case, the District Judge told Yorath that his crime ‘MERITED JAIL’ but 1) his remorse, 2) personal problems and 3) guilty plea ‘had spared him’. No apparent reference to the crippling of the victim at all)
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JUDGE CHRISTOPHER HODSON
COVENTRY CROWN COURT
After reading about what a cowardly act he (LEE HUGHES) performed in running away from the scene - (Please see LEE HUGHES Hit & Run Offences Reports in Hit & Run Offences etc (Count 10) - as well as making the grieving relatives suffer through a not guilty plea trial, you might well think that Judge Hodson could not have found a more deserving case for the then-maximum penalty of 10 years to be imposed, as there could not have been anything decent to be said in his favour. Instead, out-of-touch with reality Judge Hodson gave him more than a 40 per cent “discount”, as it’s bizarrely referred to, but for what?
As a sequel to the above report of Lee Hughes’ disgraceful driving conduct, arising out of all the huge publicity generated around this country, if not internationally, has come this report from the victim of Hughes’ previous drink-driving hit-and-literally run accident. In a carbon copy of the crash which killed a father, Hughes fled from the scene of another, earlier accident when he knocked down cyclist Laurence Shannon. Mr Shannon, 53, revealed how the millionaire striker, who later failed a breath test, admitted going to a pub following the accident, but despite warnings that Hughes would ‘one day kill someone’, charges were dropped. In return, the former West Bromwich Albion footballer, who already had a previous conviction for drink-driving, was ordered by police to undertake a short driving improvement course. Mr Shannon said: “ I warned the police back then that one day he was going to kill someone, but instead he got a slap on the wrist. After he knocked me over, he left me for dead and went off to, of all places, the pub. What kind of person does that? Afterwards they dropped the charges on the condition that he underwent a better driving course. I was absolutely outraged when I found out that was all he got for nearly destroying my life, and I was even more horrified to hear that he would be allowed back on the road. I knew for certain Hughes was an accident just waiting to happen and all I could do was just pray that when it did nobody would be seriously hurt.
Now it is too late and I can’t imagine the pain that the victim’s family are going through, but I am also disgusted because I just feel this was a tragedy which could and should have been prevented.” Mr Shannon, a factory worker, said he was also left for dead, after being struck down in April 1999 by Hughes, who was behind the wheel of a BMW. He was cycling along a main road when Hughes smashed into him from behind. The impact threw him ten feet in the air over the top of the car. But instead of stopping to see if Mr Shannon was injured, Hughes ran off. Shaking with emotion, Mr Shannon said: “As I was lying there, a passer-by said that the driver was making a run for it. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. There I was lying in the gutter and the driver was running off.”
Mr Shannon escaped with a broken shoulder but was badly cut and bruised and deeply shocked. In another startling similarity between the two cases, Hughes later turned up at the hospital and gave himself up to police. He used exactly the same excuse for leaving the scene, claiming he panicked because of the shock. Mr Shannon added: “ He told police that he became hysterical, so much so that he felt the urge to run up to the local
pub. While he was there he must have been trying to forget about the accident over a pint, while I was lying helpless in the road. It was obvious my life had meant nothing to him and he was prepared to make up any excuse to try to worm his way out of the blame.” Hughes, who failed the initial breath test, but passed a subsequent one, was reported for driving without due care and attention and failing to stop and report an accident.
After a four month wait, Mr Shannon was informed that charges had been dropped. Instead police offered Hughes the opportunity of a motoring course. A letter from West Midlands Police said: “ Detailed consideration was given by the police to the circumstances of the accident, the previous driving record of Mr Hughes and it was decided on evidence that he was required to enrol in the National Driver Improvement Scheme. This he did and successfully completed.”
Mr Shannon, who needed months of physiotherapy, received £20,000 compensation from Hughes after his insurers admitted liability, but the disgraced player never apologised to him. Bizarrely, within a week or so of Hughes having been convicted by the jury on this current matter and sentenced to his term of imprisonment, Hughes’s father wrote to a national newspaper, complaining that his son Lee, had been made a scapegoat!
Furthermore, readers will almost certainly not be surprised to learn that Lee Hughes, after taking up occupancy of his new ‘home’ in jail, failed his first drugs test !
crash which left one father-of-two dead and another wheelchair-bound with 2 broken knees and an injured hip, he was thought to have downed six shots
of whisky at two pubs. This superfit and healthy, so called professional ‘star’, with one previous conviction under his belt already, for drink-driving, fled the scene and literally vanished off the face of the earth for 36 hours. During that time, police had even broken into his house with a breathalyser kit, but he could not be found. He seemed totally unrepentant at the carnage he had left behind, not knowing whether the occupants of the other car were alive or dead. Apparently he wriggled and ducked and dived throughout the trial, and bit his lip when he discovered that the jury had not believed a word of it. He had obviously run off, or was picked up near the scene to beat the
breathalyser. The minute West Bromwich Albion management learnt he had been convicted on the major charge, they sacked him. Judge Christopher Hodson told Hughes (no relation), “While I realise that your football career is at an end, be reminded that Douglas Graham’s life is at an end.” The maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving has, (since this accident) recently been increased from ten to fourteen years. His Honour Judge Hodson, in his wisdom, sentenced Hughes to just six years imprisonment, to the complete and utter horror of the surviving relations of Mr Graham, and the now-crippled Mr Albert Frisby, 59. He banned him from driving for ten years and sentenced him to four months imprisonment concurrent on the failure to stop and failure to report charges. He was also ordered to pay £8,467 in costs.