Jailed: Telford man, 45, drove camper van over his partner

CCTV footage from a neighbour’s camera captured the moment when Jane Horton went under the vehicle in Cherry Tree Close, Wellington last June.

Shane Pountney, 45, of Park Lane, Madeley, admitted causing grievous bodily harm and dangerous driving.

Jailing him for 28 months, half to be served in custody, and banning him from driving for 18 months, Judge Anthony Lowe told Pountney: “When you could see that Miss Horton was not going to get out of the way you slowly and deliberately increased your speed. You had no control over what happened next and which part of her body you drove over.”

Mr Robert Edwards, prosecuting, said Pountney and Miss Horton had a volatile, on/off relationship.

They had been due to go to Wales in Pountney’s camper van on his birthday, June 30 last year, but this was delayed when Miss Horton was late getting back from dropping her children off at their father’s home.

They set off, but when he clipped the kerb she asked him to return home.

“He reversed onto her drive, dragged her from the van and threw her and her clothes onto the ground,” Mr Edwards said.

He said Pountney drove off the drive and, worried that he had been drinking, Miss Horton rang the police and then stood in the road to prevent him leaving.

“The camera footage shows her standing with her back to the vehicle and Pountney pushing her down the road with the van,” Mr Edwards said.

Dragged

She later told police she felt herself being dragged along before going under the van – a wheel going over her foot.

Pountney drove off leaving her lying in the road.

She was taken to hospital and needed four stitches in a head wound.

Reading out her own victim impact statement Miss Haughton said the realisation that Pountney had left her lying in a pool of blood was awful.

“I was told that I was lucky to be alive,” she said.

She said that a year on she still had horrendous back pain, whiplash and needed daily medication.

The incident had caused her anxiety, she stopped eating for days and for a while couldn’t leave the house, keeping her curtains closed.

“I used to go to the gym, run, ski and skydive - I can’t do any of those now,” she said.

“I turned to alcohol to help me sleep and as a coping mechanism but that had led to health problems.”

Mr Ranjid Sandu, in mitigation, said it had been a toxic relationship.

Pountney accepted what happened as shown by the CCTV and regretted his actions.

Mr Sandu said that when Miss Horton had been in the road, on the phone to the police, the call handler had twice asked her to get off the road but she had refused.