AN AMMANFORD taxi driver has ended up in jail for admitting a crime he had not committed.
Andrew Evans, 24, told police he had been driving his father’s Skoda Octavia when it crashed into two parked cars.
He even went to court to admit leaving the scene and failing to notify the police of an accident.
But by then officers had discovered CCTV footage that showed the collision and Evans climbing out of the passenger seat.
Evans denied attempting to pervert the course of justice. But he was convicted within 20 minutes after a trial at Swansea Crown Court.
Dyfed Thomas, prosecuting, said it was still not known who had been driving or why Evans was willing “to take the rap for someone else.”
But his explanation had been “a load of nonsense.”
Evans, of Mynddynfych Drive, Tir-y-Dail, Ammanford, told the jury he had been driving and wanted to admit it.
He said his mobile telephone had begun to vibrate as he turned into Brynteg Terrace, Ammanford, late on April 5 last year.
He tried to answer it but knocked the phone into the passenger side footwell and was reaching across to retrieve it when he drove into the parked cars.
By then, he said, he was so far across that it was easier to get out of the passenger side than the driver’s.
The footage showed Evans walking around the car and getting into the driver’s seat and someone else “shimming” across and into the passenger seat.
That person, said Mr Thomas, had been the driver at the time of the collision.
Evans claimed to have had a fare paying passenger in the back and, after the collision, to have told her to climb into the front.
“Really?,” asked Mr Thomas. “So a woman climbs over the car seats instead of getting out of the door.”
“He knows who else was in the car but to this day has not said.
“Maybe it was alcohol. For whatever reason he lied to police and lied to the court,” he added.
Two days after the collision Evans was stopped by WPC Leah Evans in the centre of Ammanford. He told her he had been driving on the night of the accident and would plead guilty.
On December 16 Evans attended Llanelli Magistrates’ Court to enter guilty pleas but the hearing was adjourned because by then police knew he was lying.
Evans told the court he had met the woman passenger a few days after the accident in Ammanford and she had asked him to “leave me out of it” because she didn’t want anyone to know where he had picked her up from at that time of night.
The judge, Mr Recorder Greg Bull, said, “Somebody has got away with a crime.
“If everybody went round doing favours for guilty people the justice system would be in chaos.”
Evans, he added, had “lied, lied and lied again” about who was really driving and must have had his reasons.
Evans spent a night in Swansea prison before Mr Recorder Bull passed a sentence of 12 months in jail, suspended for 18 months, and placed him under supervision for 12 months.
Evans was also ordered to pay £600 in costs and a surcharge and to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work for the community.
He was also placed under a 8pm to 6am electronically monitored home curfew for the next six months.
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