Cook Bishop’s Stortford crash: Recovery truck driver Micheal Eccles sentenced for drug-driving
The driver of a recovery truck that smashed into Cook in Bishop’s Stortford last summer, injuring a young shop worker, has been sentenced for drug-driving.
Micheal Eccles, 51, of Grafton Road, Greater London, appeared at Stevenage Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday (March 6).
He pleaded guilty to a charge of driving a motor vehicle with a proportion of a specified controlled drug – cocaine – above the specified limit, in connection with the incident in North Street on August 5 last year. A second charge of being in charge of the lorry with a proportion of a specified controlled drug above the specified limit was withdrawn at court.
Initially he was arrested on suspicion of drug driving and causing serious injury by driving without due care.
Eccles was disqualified from driving for 12 months and must undertake 40 hours of unpaid work, the minimum amount of hours a court can impose. He was also ordered to pay £85 in court costs and a £114 victim surcharge – less than £200 in all.
PC Joe Massey, from the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire road policing unit, said: “This incident caused a great deal of concern among the local community.
“Drug driving is exceptionally dangerous and we will not stop in our efforts to identify those who are breaking the law and putting lives at risk by driving under the influence. If you suspect someone may be driving under the influence of drugs, please call police straight away.”
The shocking incident happened at about 10am on a Saturday. All three emergency services attended and North Street was closed into the afternoon.
The truck that Eccles was driving rolled down the slope by the side of Pizza Express, across the street and into the right-hand window of frozen meals shop Cook, smashing through the glass and into a counter where staff member and university student Jodie Beverley, who was 20 at the time, was standing. Assistant manager Sarah Willett was also on duty but had nipped out to get their breakfasts.
Jodie was knocked to the ground and lay trapped by heavy freezers. She was taken by ambulance to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge but was released that evening on crutches, suffering from severe bruising but no broken bones.
Upon her release from hospital, Jodie, a former student of Hockerill Anglo-European College who lives in Stortford with her family, told the Indie: “I want to thank the members of the public and other shop owners who came to my assistance initially and all of the emergency services and the staff at Addenbrooke’s who looked after me.”
