It’ll be interesting to see how this one turns out (well, the sentence he gets).
A teenage dickhead – Michael Partington, 19 – was doing speeds of around 70mph in a 20mph zone. He lost control of the car, smashed into a tree, and killed a 14-year old girl in the process.
Before I continue, let’s just look at that again:
- 19 years old
- had several passengers in the car
- was driving at speeds up to 70mph in a 20mph zone
- lost control
- early hours of the morning
- killed a 14-year old girl
- she was his front-seat passenger
How long will it take for people to realise that this is a script that’s being followed, time and time again. At least 90% of young male drivers are genetically programmed to behave like prats when they pass their test and drive with their mates in the car (this rises to over 99% when you focus on certain areas of the country). It’s only by chance that more people like Annie Cochrane don’t end up on the casualty list – but in any case, even ONE such incident is more than enough.
There’s a lot to be said about the environments involved in these cases – this happened in Wigan, and you can’t help but also wonder what a 14-year old girl was doing out “in the early hours” with a moron like this. You might argue that this is irrelevant. Well, if you take the shortsighted view that the only issue here is what Partington was doing, you might be right. But if you look wider at the trend and predictability of this sort of thing, you really do have to start asking when society is going to realise it is really badly screwed up – and especially so in certain places.
Anyway, the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is 14 years in prison. When you think of what Partington did, and how he was deliberately driving (no doubt, to show off and burn off some testosterone), you can’t really see anything which might result in anything less than the maximum sentence. But he pleaded guilty, so that could knock a good few years off it.
Society really is a mess.
Oh, and the Judge hasn’t decided “on the length of the [driving] ban” he has issued while Partington is out on bail. It should be lifetime.