Prison officer smashed into pregnant woman’s car at 71mph while gambling on phone

Jack Bentley, 30, spent “almost the entirety” of a two hour drive playing games and placing online bets before the horror crash.

Footage captured the moment Bentley’s Ford Focus smashed into the back of the car which was stuck in stationary traffic on the A50 in Derby.

The impact of the crash on April 6 last year crumpled the Nissan X-Trail which was carrying a family of four.

A pregnant woman, who was travelling with her partner, two children, and dog, were rushed to hospital.

She had an emergency C-section at 33 weeks pregnant under general anaesthetic, and left with a broken pelvis.

The crash meant she was unable to hold her premature baby daughter, who weighed just four pounds, for three weeks.

One of the children in the car suffered a fractured ankle, while their dog needed emergency spinal surgery.

The victims were travelling home to Yorkshire after staying with relatives.

Bentley was arrested at the scene and an examination of his phone revealed he had been using online gambling sites as he travelled from Derby to Blackpool.

Bentley, of Derby, admitted two counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.

He was jailed for two years and four months at Derby Crown Court on February 11 and banned from driving for three years and two months.

In a victim impact statement, the woman said: “I needed an emergency caesarean due to my baby being in distress.

“I found this very traumatic and didn’t want my baby to be born like that and that early.

“My baby was born without skin to skin contact and me and my partner had to wait to see her.

“When you have a baby you expect to be in a bubble with your partner and newborn baby but we were separated across three wards in the hospital and missed out on so much in those early moments.

“No mother or father should have to go through this.

“The next three weeks we spent in hospital getting our baby strong enough to come home.

“I was having to visit my baby on a hospital bed to watch her in her incubator.

“I remember being there watching when all the nurses and doctors rushed around because her lung had collapsed and I had to lay there scared for her.

“Hours later the other lung also collapsed. She wasn’t strong enough for the world yet.

“For my first pregnancy this was a very traumatic experience and one no parent expects or wants to experience.”

PC Richard Morris, of Derbyshire Constabulary, said: “This was an appalling display of driving by Bentley, who spent the majority of his journey distracted by being on his phone.

“From watching the dashcam footage, it was clear that had he been paying attention he would have seen the queue of traffic in front of him and been able to stop in time.

“Instead he was more focused on his phone and subsequently ploughed into the Nissan, causing extensive injuries to the occupants and their family dog.

“The fact his actions caused a woman to give birth prematurely and left a tiny baby spending the first few weeks of their life in intensive care is nothing short of despicable.”