Dramatic video footage shows the “amazing” moment when a group of people in a BMW chase a van down the A55 and then attack it. The group threw things at the van, blocked its path, and even got out in the middle of the busy road to kick it.
The shocking video was shown at Caernarfon Crown Court on Monday, when the four men involved in the September 2018 incident were given their sentences.
A judge said that it was “a long, consistent, and planned series of very bad driving.”
The court heard that Ali Najam, 26, was driving a BMW with three other people, Said Sadat, Pedro Bergantim, and Demi Ward, in North Wales at the beginning of September. They got into a fight with the van driver, Sean Powell, and said he ran over one of the defendants’ feet.
The video was taken by someone in a car behind the black BMW. It shows the car stopping four times on the westbound lane of the A55. The people inside throw things, like a plastic water bottle, and one of them is holding a metal bar. Another person kicks the van.
Mr. Powell finally leaves his car and gets off the A55 at the Black Cat roundabout near Glan Conwy Corner. The BMW was followed to the Great Orme, where the driver and three other people in the car were arrested.
Najam, who lives on Blackberry Lane in Brinnington, Stockport, was sentenced to 22 months in jail for fighting and 15 months for driving recklessly. Sadat, who lives on Tamworth Street in Oldham and is 23 years old, got 18 months in jail for affray.
Bergantim, who lives on Taunton Road in Ashton under Lyne and is 22 years old, and Demi Ward, who is 21 and lives on Sandstone Way in Manchester, both got suspended sentences for fighting.
On Monday, prosecutor Richard Edwards said that what happened to Mr. Powell was “terrifying.” The judge, His Honour Timothy Petts, told the defendants that what happened was “strange and terrible.”
