A B.C. man who slammed his car into two female pedestrians, threatened to kill a third and then crashed into another vehicle after a four-day crack binge has been sentenced to four years in federal prison.
Lindsay Jones was left permanently disfigured and virtually unable to walk after Michael Lee Meller smashed his Ford Mustang into her legs and pinned her against an address sign in North Vancouver on July 25.
Jones was one of four women injured by Meller in what a provincial court judge described as a drug-fuelled "rampage" through the Lower Lonsdale area.
In a decision posted Tuesday, Judge Carol Baird Ellan sentenced Meller to four years in jail, minus 108 days for time already served, after Meller pleaded guilty this fall to five charges including dangerous driving causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon and hit-and-run.
"Mr. Meller's actions on the offence date, which he does not remember, are clearly something that Ms. Jones will never be permitted to forget," Baird Ellan wrote.
The judge added that she hopes Meller will be given a picture of the damage done to Jones's legs, "so that he may reflect from time to time on the harm he has caused."
Meller said he had smoked about $300 worth of crack cocaine before heading out onto the roads of North Vancouver on the day in question.
His spree of violence began when he pulled up beside 16-year-old Hanna Peinhof as she walked with her boyfriend and offered to sell her crack cocaine. She refused, and tried to cross the street in front of the Mustang.
"He just straight put the accelerator down and ripped up the street," Peinhof told CTV News at the time. "I rolled over onto the hood and onto the windshield and off the side."
Luckily, she escaped with only scrapes and bruises on her legs and hips.
But Meller wasn't finished. He drove a short distance away and confronted Jones and three friends as they walked together near the waterfront.
He made a gun motion with his hand and shouted, "You... get in the car."
When the women refused, Meller backed up his car and then accelerated into Jones, pinning her for about 10 seconds before driving away.
Witness Adam Green told CTV News that he watched as Jones lay on the ground: "I could see her ankle was swollen and all, her legs were beat up and she was unconscious at the time."
A few minutes later, Meller sideswiped another woman's car while passing her, and then backed into the vehicle at least twice more when she tried to follow him.
Police finally caught up to Meller after he drove up beside Brynn Campbell and ordered her into his car, explaining that there was a force field around her and she would be unable to move.
"Get in the car before I f---ing kill you," he told her when she declined. "Bang, bang, you're dead."
Meller was arrested at gunpoint after refusing to comply with police. When he woke up the next day, he had no memory of the violence he had committed the day before, and said he felt shocked and nauseated. He immediately wrote a letter of apology to his victims.
But the judge ruled that Meller's offences deserve harsh punishment.
"As I see it, the use of a vehicle as a weapon, while having voluntarily become seriously impaired by a significant mind altering substance, is akin to attempted murder," Baird Ellan wrote.
She noted that she would have sentenced him to more than five years in a federal prison if he hadn't pleaded guilty. Meller is also banned from driving a car for 10 years.
