The Magistrate’s Court heard that the car was braking and accelerating with the man slipping and sliding and at one point falling onto the bonnet and sitting in front of the windscreen.
Curtis Robert Marsh (26), of Rue de la Presse, St Peter, who admitted dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and driving without insurance, was sentenced to 170 hours’ community service and placed on probation for nine months. He was also banned from driving for three years.
Police legal adviser Simon Crowder said that at about 10 pm on 24 April the defendant was in a car at Clos Gosset at Longueville with a woman. The car was approached by the woman’s ex-partner, who knew Marsh was banned from driving.
The man put his hand in an area underneath the roof rack of the car. When Marsh saw the man, he started driving away but the victim’s hand was caught in the roof rack and he climbed on to the car to prevent injury, the court heard.
Mr Crowder said that the man managed to free his hand from under the roof rack when on the roof. But ‘in a scene that was like something out of a movie’ the man was slipping and sliding as Marsh was accelerating and braking. At one point the man fell to the side of the car and found his legs dragging on the floor. The court was told that the victim managed to jump free at the junction of Route du Fort near Howard Davis Park. The prosecutor said that fortunately the man’s injuries were minimal.
However, defence lawyer Advocate James Bell painted a different picture of events and produced a copy of a JEP report of a Magistrate’s Court case brought against the man who was on the roof of the car.
The lawyer said that the man jumped on the car roof, went ‘berserk’ and ‘tried to smash the window’. He said his client and his then girlfriend were fearful that the man would try to break into the car and that was why Marsh drove off.
Advocate Bell said that a call was made to the police by the woman to report the behaviour of the man on the roof, as she feared violence from him. The lawyer added that his client was driving towards police headquarters at Route du Fort at the time to seek help. Advocate Bell submitted that if Marsh had been doing something wrong, he was hardly likely to call the police.
Urging the court not to impose a custodial sentence, Advocate Bell said the circumstances were ‘unusual and unique’.
In deciding not to send Marsh to prison, Relief Magistrate David Le Cornu said: ‘This is an unusual case and the circumstances leading to the offences don’t justify what you did but do explain your actions. I am giving you a chance but if you come back to court for not attending Probation or community service appointments you know what the likely outcome will be.’
