A convicted criminal who repeatedly stabbed a man caused a horrific car crash after being released from detention on licence.
Exo Bendo, 25, careered his Mercedes head-on into a BMW, leaving a 60-year-old man inside it with a broken sternum and backbone. A court heard Bendo cut a corner, ploughed into the BMW and then dumped his car and ran away after the impact. He was out on licence partway through a 10-year prison term for almost killing a man he’d stabbed five times during a drug deal gone wrong. Now, Bendo will spend two more years in jail after admitting causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
Sentencing the driver at Nottingham Crown Court, Judge Steven Coupland said: “I am told your driving in June last year was short-lived and over a short distance but it was not short-lived in terms of the consequences. I have seen the CCTV and it is plain when you turned right you did so it was at speed. Your driving was aggressive and selfish and (the victim) was driving perfectly properly. What you did was highly dangerous and there was no opportunity for him to avoid your car. He suffered a fractured sternum and a fractured vertebrae and spent five days in hospital.
“Even now, months later, he is still suffering the effects of the collision and has had to miss important life events because of his significant physical limitations. You, having caused the crash, did not get out of your car and attempt to help him. What you did was to run off and leave him.” The crash, which happened on the A52 near Lenton Abbey, Nottingham, happened as a result of "aggressive and selfish" driving, the judge said. It left the 60-year-old victim with injuries so severe he needed to spend five days in hospital for treatment.
Jon Fountain, prosecuting, said Bendo was travelling at speed, on the wrong side of the road, on June 12, 2023. The lawyer said: "This was reckless disregard for other road users. It seems a bus had stopped and Mr Bendo, showing impatience, turned into Charles Avenue cutting a corner.
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Bendo will spend two more years in jail after admitting causing serious injury by dangerous driving (PA Archive/PA Images)“It was an aggressive manoeuvre and seriously dangerous and the defendant then alighted his Mercedes and fled the scene. He did not wait to see how (the victim) was. In fact (the victim) spent five days in the QMC (Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham) and was then in a back brace for four months.
“In his victim impact statement, he said he was one of the fittest 60-year-olds you would see, still playing football, going to the gym three times a week, going out on his mountain bike at the weekend and walking his dog. Since this happened he has had to miss two weddings and had to cancel a holiday he’d planned."
Bendo, who used to live in Nottingham city centre but now has no fixed abode, was sent to a young offender’s institution for 10 years in 2018 for the stabbing. The victim believed Bendo had short-changed him during a drug deal in Grantham, Lincolnshire, reports Nottinghamshire Live.
Digby Johnson, defending Bendo this time, said his client had been released partway through that sentence in November 2022 and had been working. He said on the day of the incident Bendo, who had only been driving for three months, was behind the wheel of a works car and was “inexperienced” at being in control of such a powerful vehicle.
He said: "He misjudged the corner and he ran away because he knew he was going to get into trouble.” As well as the jail term, Judge Coupland disqualified Bendo from driving for four years. The offence also saw the defendant recalled on licence to serve some of the remaining time he has on the 10-year term he was handed for the stabbing in 2018.
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