GO TO JAIL! (From Barry And District News)

GO TO JAIL!

A FATHER-OF-TWO has been jailed for a year and banned from the road for two years for driving across the pavement near a Barry school as children were making their way home.

Gareth Romans, aged 29, of Ravenshoe Road, was on Bridge Street, near Cadoxton Primary School, when he sped away from police because his Vauxhall Cavalier was uninsured and unlicensed.

Prosecutor Richard Evans told Cardiff Crown Court on Friday: "Police saw Romans accelerate away from them.

"He went straight around the roundabout the wrong way.

"Romans then went down a narrow road with cars lining either side.

"The pavement was full of pedestrians including schoolchildren. He was driving at around 45 miles per hour.

"There was a Volkswagen people carrier stationary in front of him.

"Romans slammed on the brakes and mounted the pavement to try and get past the car."

Romans admitted slamming into the back of the car, containing a mother and her three children.

Tom Crowther, defending, said Romans had turned to drugs after being violently attacked when he left school 13 years ago.

He said: "Mr Romans attributes his drug addiction and the problems that came from that to a serious violent incident against him when he was just 16 years old.

"He is now nearly 30, with children to look after, and he is aware he has not much else."

But Judge Stephen Hopkins QC said that he had posed a danger to the public.

He told Romans: "Your actions were reckless - as can be shown with the collision with the car.

"Mercifully the innocent people in the car, a mother and her three children, were relatively unhurt by your actions."

Chris Myers, head of Cadoxton Primary, whose pupils were heading away from school when the incident occurred, said: "This was a very dangerous occurrence and could have put the children"s lives in danger.

"The roads around Cadoxton are dangerous, and this sort of behaviour only increases the danger even more."