A DRUNK, drug-driving car thief miraculously avoided ploughing into three police officers following a binge at a Farnham pub. This week, Guildford Crown Court heard how 20-year-old James Howe of The Street, Tongham, drank 20 bottles of beer and took at least six ecstasy tablets in a Farnham pub last July. The lethal cocktail led to Howe being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder of the constables, who risked life and limb to prevent his escape from a quiet Guildford cul-de-sac. Drug-fuelled Howe sped to Guildford in his car, alerting a police patrol. Officers attempted to detain the defendant for speeding, but when they tried to pull him over, he accelerated away. With police in hot pursuit, Howe abandoned the car in Roman Farm Road and fled through woodland on foot. A tracker dog team caught up with Howe at Bramble Close at around 1 am on July 11, where he had hot-wired a Ford Fiesta - a practice he had honed "since the age of 10" - before ignoring police orders to come quietly. After aggressively revving the engine, Howe repeatedly accelerated backwards and forwards, forcing three constables - Pcs Paul Armer, Ben Hudson and Janet Simmonds - into a life-threatening ordeal. Pc Simmonds, a dog handler, told the court that she tried to pull the defendant out of the vehicle by grabbing him round the neck. As Howe accelerated forward she was half hanging out of the vehicle, and was flung to the ground. Howe was accused of deliberately reversing towards Pc Simmonds to try to run her over, almost crushing her legs as she lay on the ground. He was also said to have accelerated at speed towards Pc Paul Armer, narrowly missing him before crashing the car into a wall. In court, Pc Hudson said: "There were serious fears for my life. The shock of being nearly fatally injured set in and it is something I remember quite often." Restraint proved difficult, with Howe's "trance-like state" producing "unnatural strength", which nullified two doses of CS gas and repeated truncheon blows. Pc Armer continued: "I thought one of us was going to be fatally injured. The gas had no effect at all. I was continuously jumping out of the way of the vehicle. I was scared for my life at this point and did not think we would manage to get him to stop." Wreaking havoc in the stolen Fiesta, Howe left a trail of chaos in his wake, writing off a parked Vauxhall Astra and badly damaging a Vauxhall Zafira, before smashing through a wall and into the porch of a house. Kevin Knight, an off-duty policeman of Bramble Close and owner of both vehicles, described the ordeal. "The noise that woke me was the noise of an engine revving very loudly and the noise of male voices shouting very loudly. "I saw one male police officer physically dive out of the way of the car, like a goalkeeper would dive, to avoid being run over." Howe once again fled on foot, before being chased around a garden, and finally being bundled into a police van. An eyewitness, Melissa Martin, 17, described Howe as saying: "I didn't mean to kill anyone, it was the drugs, I need drugs," as he was handcuffed. Taken to Guildford police station, it took two blasts from a 50,000 volt tazer gun to finally restrain Howe, after he lashed out in a violent struggle, kicking three officers in the face. The defendant pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated vehicle taking and three counts of common assault. But he faced trial after denying three counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm, and alternative counts of assault with intent to resist arrest and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He was found guilty of the three assault charges after the jury heard how the officers were scratched and bruised as they attempted to force the crazed motorist out of the car. At the conclusion of the six-day trial on Monday, the jury returned not guilty verdicts to the three more serious counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm to the police officers. Father-of-one Howe told the court that he had hot-wired "hundreds" of cars since the age of 10. The jury was told that when the defendant was 13 he was convicted of taking a motor vehicle without consent, and convicted again two years later for dangerous driving. In November 2003, he smashed a police officer over the head with a baton and broke the finger of another policeman as they tried to arrest him for dangerous driving, the court heard. In an interview, Howe told police that he could not remember anything that happened after visiting the Farnham pub. He told the court: "I've sat down and thought about it so many times and I still can't piece it together." When asked how he got from Farnham to Guildford by car, he replied: "I don't have the faintest idea." He said that he had been at "the lowest point in my life" after his fiancée kicked him out of their flat in Ash, and he lost his job in the same week. The defendant broke down in tears as he told the jury that when he woke up in a police cell he thought he had been in a fight. "I was on the floor with just my boxer shorts on, I was covered from head to toe in blood and I couldn't move my right arm. "I know in my heart I wouldn't go out to try and hurt people, I wouldn't go out to try and run people over. I don't remember being there." Judge Derek Inman adjourned sentence until February 26.
