Jailed: Telford man, 20, left best friend paralysed in horror crash

Front seat passenger Daniel Colley suffered horrific injuries after the Vauxhall Corsa, driven by Dylan Shuker without a licence or insurance, left the road in Jiggers Bank, Ironbridge, and hit an embankment before flipping "two or three times".

The crash in March last year happened just weeks after Mr Colley, 20, had been accepted into the Army and has left him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Shuker, 20, of Birchmore in Brookside, Telford, pleaded guilty at a previous court hearing to causing serious injury by dangerous driving, driving without a licence, driving without insurance and failing to stop after an accident.

He was sentenced to 12 months in a young offenders institution by Judge Robin Onions when he appeared at Shrewsbury Crown Court yesterday.

Mr Michael Grey, prosecuting, said Shuker, Mr Colley and another friend Arthur McDonagh had been on a night out at Pussycats nightclub in Wellington on March 26 last year and the victim had asked Shuker to drive him home.

The prosecutor said Mr McDonagh told police Shuker applied his handbrake as the car was going around a roundabout and "laughed" about it.

"As the defendant went downhill on Jiggers Bank Daniel Colley said the defendant applied the handbrake again," Mr Grey said,

"That caused the car to drift, the front of the car went to the left and the rear of the car went to the right. The car left the road and hit an embankment before rolling on to its roof, back on to its wheels and then rolling two or three more times before coming to rest. The defendant then left the scene, maybe because of the drink in his system, maybe because he had no licence or insurance."

Mr Grey told the court Mr Colley had been left "almost completely tetraplegic" from the neck down.

Twenty years old - and he will be wheelchair dependent for the rest of his life," Mr Grey said.

The court heard Shuker called the police station and was spoken to and breathalysed by officers at his aunt's home in Madele, two hours after the crash. The reading was 29 microgrammes of alchohol in 100 millilitres of blood, just under the legal limit of 35.

Miss Frances Willmott, for Shuker, said Mr Colley was his best friend and that he was genuinely remorseful about what had happened.

"It is something he will have to live with for the rest of his life," she said.

Sentencing Shuker, Judge Onions said it was a "desperately sad, perhaps even tragic" case.

"You were driving too fast for the road," he told Shuker.

"I have to say that in all my time as a judge, the unfortunate Daniel has probably suffered the most serious injuries I have come across. I hope he gets the compensation to which he is entitled."

Shuker was also banned from driving for two years from the time of his release.