Teen’s Leg Amputated After Driver Falls Asleep, Crashes Into His Scooter

A 33-year-old driver in North Yorkshire, England, has been sentenced to a year in jail after he fell asleep at the wheel of his car in 2019 and crashed into a teenager, causing severe leg injuries that led to an amputation.

Wesley Millar, of Selby, was handed a 12-month jail sentence in York Crown Court after he pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving, local newspaper The York Press reported.

Judge Simon Hickey also disqualified Millar from driving for two and a half years.

The Nestlé factory worker, while tired and deprived of sleep, was driving along the A19 at the village of Crockey Hill in York in July 2019 when his vehicle veered straight into the path of a scooter coming in the opposite direction being ridden by 17-year-old Joe Moughan.

Moughan, a York College student who was traveling to his girlfriend's, was thrown around 20 meters (65 feet) through the air due to the impact and suffered "very severe leg injuries," according to the report. His scooter, meanwhile, exploded into flames.

The crash left Moughan needing seven operations, some eight hours long, including one in which doctors had to amputate a leg below the knee after a serious infection had developed.

Moughan told the court that he had experienced pain "like I have never felt before in my life."

"My life is and always will be different from this day until the day I die," Moughan was quoted as saying by The Press.

The teenager added that he was in a "world of pain" and on a cocktail of drugs and that his mental health had suffered from the incident, according to the newspaper.

"I am 17 and my life is falling apart through no fault of my own," he said.

The court was told that Moughan's life was saved in the crash by protective clothing and an ex-armed forced medic who applied a tourniquet to his leg before paramedics arrived and airlifted him to a hospital in Leeds.

Millar's lawyer, Victoria Smith-Swaine, said in mitigation that her client recognized the risks posed by driving while tired and deprived of sleep. Millar was also "incredibly remorseful" over the incident, according to Smith-Swaine.

"He has learned a profound and salutary lesson and will not trouble the courts again," the lawyer said.

She added that Millar would like to meet Moughan one day to apologize, if the latter agreed.

Millar received his sentence after the court found him to have had "impeccable" character prior to the crash and that he had shown "clear remorse," The Press reported. His behavior, however, was culpable because he had driven after not having adequate sleep.