Jack Tomlinson, 21, drove his friends and two teenage girls out to a remote spot at Langdale End, where he crashed into a tree after losing control of his red Citroen C3 on a bend, York Crown Court heard.
The crash resulted in the death of Tomlinson’s friend Harry Coupland, 18, who suffered severe head injuries and later died in hospital.
A teenage female passenger in the car, who can’t be named for legal reasons, lost her hand in the crash. Her hand was recovered at the scene of the crash near Dalby Forest but couldn’t be reattached by surgeons.
Prosecutor Richard Walters said the fatal crash occurred on an unclassified road at Bickley Gate at about 11.30pm on August 13, 2021, after Tomlinson, who was 18 at the time, had been drinking at the Denison Arms in East Ayton.
“The Citroen C3 left the road, turned over and hit a tree,” he said.
Harry was a rear-seat passenger in the vehicle which had tumbled down an embankment near woodland before hitting the tree. All five teenage passengers suffered serious injuries and required hospital treatment.
The court heard that on the night in question, Tomlinson – who was on bail at the time for a previous drug-driving offence – had been warned by his mother not to drink and drive. He was later seen by a neighbour who saw him after he came out of the pub and said he was “drunk and staggering”.
She too warned him not to drive, but he drove back to the pub with a named girl to pick up his friends. He then decided to drive them out to “some remote countryside near Dalby Forest”.
One of the girls said that as they approached Dalby Forest, Tomlinson was driving “too fast” and at one stage went through temporary red lights. He then stopped at a layby where he got out of the vehicle and smoked a cannabis joint.
He then set off in the car again, getting “too close” to a female motorist’s vehicle who said she thought Tomlinson was trying to “intimidate” her because she was driving slowly.
She said the vehicle then started “skidding around, like a handbrake turn”, and then she lost sight of it.
A crash-scene investigator suggested that the Citroen had lost control after negotiating a right-hand bend at “too high a speed”. It then spun around, careered off the road and went down an embankment, where it struck some trees, overturned and rolled over, coming to a rest on its wheels.
Mr Walters said it appeared that Tomlinson was the only one who remained conscious and as one of the girls came round, “she thought everyone was dead”.
Tomlinson went to find help and ended up at a local monastery.
“One of the monks noticed he was dishevelled, covered in mud and very distressed,” added Mr Walters.
“(Tomlinson) was crying and said there had been a car accident and everyone had died.”
Two of the other teenagers made their way to a farmhouse to summon help. Police and an ambulance arrived at the scene and all five teenagers were taken to hospital.
Harry suffered extensive head injuries, a fractured skull and a broken leg and hip. He was taken to Hull Royal Infirmary, but the neurological team told his family that surgery would be futile. He died the follow morning.
The teenage girl suffered “hand amputation” in the crash and one of the named teenage boys had broken his back in three places.
Another girl suffered a head wound but Tomlinson, incredibly, ended up with only minor injuries. When police spoke to him at the scene, he was said to be “very upset and slurring his words”.
Harry Coupland
He told them that one of the other boys was driving the car at the time of the crash but later admitted this was a lie.
A subsequent blood test showed that he would have been well over the legal alcohol limit at the time of the accident. A drug wipe revealed that he was also more than twice the specified limit for cannabis.
Tomlinson, of Farside Road, West Ayton, was charged with causing death by careless driving while unfit through drink and drugs and admitted the offences. He appeared for sentence on Thursday (October 31) in front of families from all parties in the public gallery.
The court heard that 11 days before the accident, he was caught drug-driving in a previous incident and was on bail at the time of the fatal crash in the North York Moors. In January 2022, he received a 12-month driving ban at Scarborough Magistrates’ Court for the previous drug-driving offence.
In a victim statement read out by the prosecution, Peter Coupland, Harry’s father, spoke on behalf of his family when he said his son was a “shining beacon of light with a tremendous sense of humour”.
“He was incredibly caring and loyal, irrepressible; a kind, good-humoured boy who was a free spirit,” added Mr Coupland.
“There was all manner of good about Harry. He was effortlessly funny and charismatic.”
He said Harry “loved skateboards and scooters”, playing bass guitar and horse-riding and was involved in karate and scout groups and football and cricket teams.
Harry, an apprentice joiner who had “grown up in the same small community” as Tomlinson, hoped one day to set up his own joinery business.
“He had his whole life and a bright future in front of him before it was suddenly taken from him,” said Mr Coupland.
The girl who lost her hand said she had been kept in hospital for two weeks when she underwent two operations to clean the wound and apply a skin graft. She had been advised by surgeons that her hand could not be properly reattached even if surgery were successful.
She could no longer do everyday tasks without assistance and had had “lots of therapy” to help her deal with the fall-out from the crash. She was now trialling a prosthetic, robotic limb and “teaching myself to use two (arms) again”.
She had been forced to leave a job she loved due to her horrific injuries.
The teenage boy who broke his back said he had been forced to quit his job as a store assistant at a supermarket. Before the crash, he had applied to join the Royal Navy and was due to have an assessment a week after the accident, but his injuries put paid to this.
He had reapplied in 2022, but the Royal Navy told him they couldn’t accept him because of his injuries.
Defence barrister Susannah Proctor said that Tomlinson suffered from numerous mental-health conditions including attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder which affected his decision-making and impulsivity.
She said that Tomlinson, who had tried to commit suicide since the death of his friend, was “genuinely and deeply remorseful”.
Judge Sean Morris described the case as a “tragedy” and told Tomlinson: “One of your close friends was Harry Coupland. He was a vibrant, funny, loving individual whose presence in a room would brighten everybody’s day – that won’t happen again.”
He added that a “bubbly” teenage girl had lost her hand and a teenage boy had missed out on “serving his country in the Royal Navy”.
“All these lives are broken in one way or another and countless other lives are broken and there is nothing this court can do to heal the pain or pour balm on the wounds in people’s hearts, and your life has been broken,” said the judge.
“Since losing your friend you have suffered nightmares and you have tried to kill yourself on more than one occasion.”
Mr Morris said that due to the “inexcusable” delay in the case reaching the courts and the strong mitigating factors, particularly Tomlinson’s mental-health and cognitive issues, he would reduce the inevitable jail sentence accordingly.
Tomlinson was jailed for three years and nine months, of which he will serve half behind bars before being released on prison licence. He was banned from driving for two years.
