The Coventry Evening Telegraph (England)
RUGBY, England — A fake fireman fitted a car with blue flashing lights and sirens and raced to the scene of a non-existent crash, a court heard.
Dean Jones turned his dad’s tiny red VW hatchback into a makeshift fire engine and raced at double the speed limit on the wrong side of the road.
The 19-year-old, from Shapfell, Brownsover, Rugby, narrowly avoided a string of collisions before police finally put an end to his fire fighting fantasy.
Jones, a former fire service volunteer, admitted dangerous driving and was banned from driving for 18 months, ordered to complete 180 hours of unpaid work and pay pounds 800 costs.
Judge Martin Walsh, sitting at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Thursday, told him: “The consequences of what you did could have been disastrous.”
The court heard Jones, previously of Great Barr, near Birmingham, had begun volunteering for the Young Firefighters’ Association when he was ten and had progressed to be an instructor, going into schools to teach about the service.
His lifelong ambition to be a firefighter was crushed when his application to join the brigade was unsuccessful in 2008.
Rhiannon Jones, prosecuting, said the teenager paid pounds 45 for the sirens and lights on eBay before fitting them to the VW Fox on March 19.
Police spotted him driving along Beacon Road in Walsall with red and blue lights flashing and sirens blaring and followed him for a mile through residential streets at speeds of up to 60mph.
Miss Jones said he dodged between traffic, narrow ly missed other cars and drove on the wrong side o the road before pulling over.
“He was wearing a West Midlands Fire Servic T-shirt and told the officers he was a fireman lookin for a major road traffic collision,” she said.
In the car police found a full firefighters’ uniform including yellow helmet and safety boots but, whe quizzed, Jones admitted he was a shop cashier wh volunteered for the Young Firefighters’ Associatio Jasvir Mann, defending, said: “Putting road users risk is a serious matter and he realises that.”
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