Drug dealer drove stolen Land Rover through crossing and down Hertfordshire rail line
Footage posted on Twitter by @Cyp_Alii shows the car careering down the tracks
A drug dealer who smashed a stolen Land Rover through a level crossing and then drove down a train line as he fled police has been jailed for 10 years.
Kieron Francis, 36, left astounded commuters in his wake as he drove on to the tracks at Cheshunt station in Hertfordshire in July 2021, before stopping 200 metres down the track and running.
His stranded car meant 66 trains were cancelled, others were delayed by more than eight hours and Network Rail incurred costs of £47,700, St Albans Crown Court heard.
Video footage on social media from the time showed the Range Rover ended up on the rail track. One witness said: “It was like a scene from Grand Theft Auto, the video game.”
Francis, previously of Henniker Road in Ipswich, and now of Dagenham, was cleared by a jury of stealing the Land Rover, but convicted of two charges of endangering life by driving the car on to the rail tracks and by abandoning it there.
The black Discovery had been stolen from the Tesco car park in Braintree in Essex more than a month before, on Sunday 11 June 2021.
At about 9.30am on 15 July, a tracker on the car led officers to Windmill Road in Cheshunt.
Francis was behind the wheel of the car which had false plates. When officers tried to stop him, he exchanged punches with one and crashed into other cars before driving off.
Harry Hewitt, prosecuting, told the court Francis drove towards the station, smashed through the crossing and turned south down the track.
A train coming down the line had to be stopped, said Mr Hewitt.
Francis was found by two people who were on a canal boat. He was shaking, wet and had a black eye.
After borrowing a phone to call someone to collect him, he gave them a total of £105 for them to get him clothes and shoes. He was arrested 13 days later.Francis had previously admitted dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, two offences of criminal damage, unlawfully driving on the railway tracks, assaulting an emergency worker and abandoning the Discovery. He also admitted having no insurance.
Francis had also pleaded guilty to supplying crack and heroin in Braintree between January and July 2021, as he ran a drug line in the town.
Mitigating, Chantel Gaber said: “He has mental health and learning difficulties. He suffers anxiety and depression and is in constant pain after an accident.”
She said he had been in custody since July 2021, and he would not have behaved in the way he did were it not for medication he was taking.
“It was a seemingly spur of the moment decision (to drive onto the track). There was no plan,” she said.
Recorder Eason Rajah KC told him: “Your previous convictions show you are reckless to the risk of causing injury to people or property when you get behind a wheel.”
The judge added: “You deliberately drove through closed crossing barriers. You knew when you did so you were endangering the lives of countless people.
“It is just luck nobody was seriously injured or killed that day. It is only the speed with which the railway was shut down that prevented a serious accident."
Det Con Jim Simpson, of Hertfordshire Police, said: “Francis’ actions on that day were extremely dangerous and it’s a miracle that no one was more seriously hurt.
“I’m very pleased that the efforts of all the officers involved have led to convictions for such rarely used legislation that encompassed the full intent of Francis’ actions.”
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