Car rolled five times before coming to rest on common

A nationally-accredited forensic accident investigator found that the Ford Kuga had been travelling at between 64mph and 77mph when it left the road. Four of the five people in it were thrown out – the one who remained was the only one wearing a seat belt.

CCTV footage from Vistas showed the car leaving the road near the junction with La Rocquette road before coming to rest near Rue des Goddards.

Crown Advocate Rory Calderwood told the Royal Court how a witness reported hearing a car engine ‘topping out’ on revs at 11.39pm. They thought it was being driven at speed, heard a massive bang and believed it had crashed.

The vehicle had drifted on to the other side of the road after the driver, Anthony Hamon, failed to negotiate the left-hand bend.

The front seat passenger, his girlfriend at the time, and the only one wearing a seatbelt, aggravated a pre-existing back injury. A female passenger was lucky to escape with only cuts and bruises to her face, arms and leg.

A male passenger who was thrown a significant distance, fractured a vertebrae in his neck, a rib, had a lacerated liver, contusions and a punctured lung. The court heard that while he had now made a recovery, his neck had been in brace for some time and he was now showing symptoms of PTSD.

Mr Bougourd suffered catastrophic chest injuries and was pronounced dead in hospital.

Hamon broke 11 ribs and a collar bone. He told a paramedic at the scene that he had been the driver and had ‘put the car on the field’.

He spent 11 days in hospital and was arrested immediately upon his release. He gave no comment responses to questions in interview.

Judge Russell Finch said such incidents were fortunately rare on local roads. The defendant had been driving at a greatly excessive speed and had created substantial damage. He was a person of bad character and no stranger to prison. The probation service put him at a very high likelihood of re-offending.

‘A life was lost due to your appalling, reckless behaviour and the clock cannot be put back,’ he told the defendant. It’s all down to you.’

Hamon was jailed for five years for causing death by dangerous driving and banned from driving for 12 years.

The court heard how Hamon had served two custodial sentences for drug trafficking offences – 30 months in 2014 and 34 months in 2018. On his release in November 2021 he had been made subject to an adult custody supervision order, and the offence put him in breach of that.

Defending, Advocate Samuel Steel said his client was not the victim here and he was not instructed to make any excuses on his behalf. He had driven like an idiot that night to impress his then girlfriend and his friends. A million apologies could not change what had happened. He would accept any punishment for the pain he had caused, and no sentence would be enough.

He accepted going to pubs after the crash but did it to help his emotional pain. On three occasions it was said that he had been in the same establishment as Mr Bougourd’s brother. He would have left if he had known the brother was uncomfortable at his presence. He had not driven since the crash.