News / Jail for crashing stolen motorcycle
A MAN from Mossbank described as being “lucky to be alive” after crashing a stolen motorcycle while under the influence has been sent to jail and disqualified from driving.
Grant Huntington, of 18 Sandside, was sent to prison for eleven months and banned from the road for four and a half years after admitting a string of offences at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Thursday.
The 27 year old was also jailed for an additional month after an existing unpaid work order was revoked.
Appearing from custody, Huntington pled guilty to taking a motorcycle without the owner’s consent from an address at Lerwick’s King Haakon Street on 27 May before failing to slow down or give way at the junction between Burgh Road and Scalloway Road.
He then emerged from the junction at excessive speed, driving into the opposing carriageway into the face of an oncoming vehicle which had to perform an emergency stop.
Huntington collided with the pavement, coming off the motorcycle and rendering himself unconscious while not wearing protective headgear.
The man from Mossbank pled guilty to driving the motorcycle in various parts of Lerwick while unfit through drink or drugs, while disqualified from holding a licence and without any insurance.
He also admitted failing to cooperate with a preliminary breath test and refusing to provide a blood specimen at Lerwick’s Gilbert Bain Hospital.
Huntington also shouted, swore and threatened violence to police officers and their children at the Gilbert Bain on 27 and 28 May.
Procurator fiscal Duncan Mackenzie said the stolen motorbike had only been bought by its owner the day before.
Defence agent Liam McAllister admitted that Huntington, who had only been released from prison two weeks earlier, had an “unenviable record” at just 27 years of age.
“He is very lucky to be alive,” the solicitor said, adding that the incident had been as “close to self-destruction as one could get.”
McAllister said Huntington had no recollection of the offences and only remembers getting on the back of the motorcycle as a passenger.
After taking time to contemplate his sentence, Sheriff Philip Mann gave Huntington a total of eleven months in jail and backdated the sentence to 30 May when he was first placed into custody.
An extra month of jail was given after an existing community payback order for possession of heroin and diazepam at the NorthLink terminal in Aberdeen on 18 May last year was revoked.
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