A mother and her six-month-old baby boy were pushed against a wall after a drunk driver mounted on the pavement and slammed into them.<\/p>\n
The \u201cdespicable\u201d incident happened on the evening of October 14 last year in\u00a0Belgrave Road\u00a0as pedestrians were walking along the Leicester\u2019s famous Golden Mile.<\/p>\n
Bipranjit Singh 32-year-old got in his car leaving his home in\u00a0Cossington Street, Belgrave,<\/p>\n
after drinking and having a row with his ex-wife, intending to drive round and confront her in person.<\/p>\n
Once on to Belgrave Road, Singh who was nearly twice the drink-driving limit, drove towards two sisters out walking with their three children.<\/p>\n
Singh ended up pinning one mother to the wall of a shop, smashing her right leg, and also crushing her baby son\u2019s pushchair against the wall.<\/p>\n
The baby escaped unhurt.<\/p>\n
The woman has still not recovered from her injuries and still walks using two crutches seven months after the incident.<\/p>\n
Singh, who admitted charges of causing serious injury by dangerous driving and driving with excess alcohol, was jailed for 22 months at\u00a0Leicester Crown Court\u00a0on 8 May and will be banned from driving for two years after his release.<\/p>\n
Judge Martin Hurst told him it was a \u201cdespicable act\u201d and praised the members of public who grabbed Singh to ensure he could not escape or do any further harm after his car came to a halt.<\/p>\n
The judge said it made no sense why Singh had decided to mount the pavement when one of the two lanes of\u00a0Belgrave Road\u00a0was clear of traffic.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cThe only explanation is you were emotionally overwrought and had been drinking too much to be thinking about getting behind the wheel of a car.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d had so much to drink you didn\u2019t know what you were doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat child was crushed against the shop front and his mother was too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no certainty she will make a full recovery now, or ever, from what is a nasty injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt must have been apparent to you what was going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI accept you did not attempt to flee.<\/p>\n
“If you had you would not have got far \u2013 happily a large number of members of the public were rapidly around the vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier in the court hearing, the judge was read a victim impact statement from the injured woman, who is having to stay at her sister\u2019s flat with her son because she cannot care for him alone.<\/p>\n
In the statement, read out by prosecutor Philip Gibbs, she said: \u201cI have to walk with two crutches and I do not go out apart from for medical appointments.]<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m scared to go outside and I feel fear whenever a car passes by.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctors have not yet indicated how well my leg will heal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like a burden on my family.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m having sleepless nights thinking about my future.<\/p>\n
“I have serious concerns about how we will be able to function as a family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sarah Cornish, representing Singh, who had the hearing relayed to him by a Punjabi interpreter, said her client had been a lorry driver with a clean driving licence before the incident.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cIt was completely out of character. This was a moment of madness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A mother and her six-month-old baby boy were pushed against a wall after a drunk driver mounted on the pavement and slammed into them. The \u201cdespicable\u201d incident happened on the evening of October 14 last year in\u00a0Belgrave Road\u00a0as pedestrians were walking along the Leicester\u2019s famous Golden Mile. Bipranjit Singh 32-year-old got in his car leaving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,3,112],"tags":[1071,1072],"class_list":["post-26348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-news","category-top-stories","tag-bipranjit-singh","tag-drunk-driver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}