A yob driver who killed his friend after crashing at more than 70mph has been jailed for 12 years.
Jordan Wall, 25, lost control of the Ford Connect van he bought just four days earlier after speeding through a red light while being chased by the police. He was under investigation at the time for a rape, for which he was later convicted.
His passenger, dad-of-three Matthew Hammonds, died at the scene. Covered in his friend’s blood, Wall fled and tried to climb into people’s gardens before he was caught hiding beneath a tarpaulin.
He said at the scene ‘I wish I was dead. I wish I’d died in that van. I got scared, I didn’t know what to do’ but later answered no comment to questions put to him at interview.
In a victim personal statement, Mr Hammonds’ partner Charlotte Mccudden described him as the ‘colour in her life’ and said she felt empty without him. Their three children had been left grief stricken, with their five-year-old son even saying he ‘wanted to die so he can be with daddy’.
Directing part of her statement to Wall himself, she said: “Stop being a coward and show genuine remorse.”
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Jailing him for 12 years, Recorder Michael Roques told Wall: “It was in short a horrific period of sustained, incredibly dangerous driving.
“It was quite frankly entirely predictable that somebody would lose their life, whether that was you or Mr Hammonds or indeed any other road user or pedestrian that was anywhere near you given the way that you had been driving.
“There is no sentence that this court can pass that would in any way reflect the loss of a son, father, partner and uncle, no sentence that could ever put that wrong right.”
Prosecutor Charles Royle told Oxford Crown Court that Wall’s driving in the hours leading up to the fatal crash in Witney on July 11, 2020, had prompted a succession of calls to the police. He labelled it ‘as sustained a piece of bad driving as the court is likely to see’.
At around 8pm, the driver of a blue Mini was repeatedly rammed by the Ford – including while the driver of the car was on the phone to 999.
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Wall boxed the smaller car in before both he and Mr Hammonds, who also threw a bottle at the Mini, punched at its windows. The van’s pursuit ended only when the Mini driver pulled into Witney police station.
The friends stopped off at The Bell pub, Ducklington, where Wall was said to have upset other customers. As they walked away from the pub, the defendant was said to have punched the heads off flowers while holding a pint. The landlady called the police, concerned he was over the drink drive limit.
They were refused entry to Wetherspoons. Back in the van, Wall drove at tables outside The Fleece in Church Green, leaving a traffic cone lodged underneath the vehicle. They verbally abused members of the public, with Mr Hammonds asking one woman, who was with her 12-year-old son, ‘what the f*** are you looking at’ before Wall called her a ‘silly b****’.
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Police caught up with the van in the car park of The Leys recreation ground at 9.40pm and tried to speak to the two men. Wall and Mr Hammonds got back in the van; Wall pushed past the patrol car and sped away.
The officers lost sight of the van but were soon directed by bystanders to where it had crashed through railings and into a tree in Thorney Leys.
CCTV showed the van had gone through the red light at the cross roads from Station Lane to Thorney Leys at around 80mph – so fast that witnesses described seeing all four wheels leaving the road as the van briefly became airborne.
Neither Wall nor his passenger were wearing seatbelts. Mr Hammonds struck his head on the dashboard and was killed instantly.
When police arrived around 20 seconds later, the driver’s side airbags had been deployed. Wall had already fled, leaving his friend behind in the van.
The defendant, who was discovered hiding in a nearby garden and later taken to hospital, was found to be the over the limit for alcohol, cannabis and cocaine. He refused to provide a blood sample.
The court heard he was under investigation at the time for a rape committed in September 2019.
That sexual assault was committed after he was invited into the Carterton woman’s home, where she was alone with her toddler.
He later refused to leave and raped his victim after threatening to molest her teenage sister. The victim said she felt ‘broken’ by the ordeal.
The mum said: “I’ll never forget what he did with me but for the sake of my children I will learn to live with it.”
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Wall, of Hawthorn Road, Eynsham, pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving at an earlier hearing. Jurors convicted him last month of rape.
He had three previous convictions, including one earlier this year for drug driving in June 2021.
Recorder Roques said that the drug drive offence caused him ‘some concern’.
“I have read a very large number of references on your behalf that speak not only to a completely different person than the one described in the prosecution papers,” he said.
“But almost all of [the references] refer to the devastation that it caused you, being responsible for the death of your friend.
“It ill-behoves that memory my choosing to drive once again whilst under the influence of drugs.”
Adrian Amer, mitigating, suggested his client had gone ‘off the rails’ after he was told of the rape allegation. “He found that difficult to cope with and therefore matters in his head got out of control.”
The groundworker was said to be ‘completely, utterly and totally full of remorse’ for killing his friend in the Witney crash.
Wall was banned from driving for a total of 13 years and two months, will be on the sex offender register for life and must abide by a 10 year restraining order preventing him from contacting the woman he raped.
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