Drink-driver who downed shots before leaving woman with life-changing injuries in head-on horror smash is jailed
A SPEEDING drink-driver who left a woman with life-changing injuries and hurt six others in a head-on horror crash has been jailed.
Gabrielle Dures, 24, had been downing shots before she ploughed her Audi A1 into an oncoming Fiat 500 on a coastal road.
Three women, aged 18, 23 and 24, suffered serious injuries, while four others, aged 22, 26, 22 and 18, sustained minor injuries.
One of the women in the Fiat suffered life-changing injuries in the May 2023 crash.
Dures sobbed as she was jailed for 32 months after after pleading guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving to the four Fiat occupants.
Liverpool Crown Court heard Dures had been at the The Lighthouse pub in Wallasey with friends.
CCTV showed her leaving at 9.30pm with a glass in her hand, which she downed before clambering into her Audi to head to another pub.
Dures told her friends Megan Findlay, Stevie Garrity, Sophie Ford and Renee Hunt that she was "fine to drive" after one of them suggested getting a taxi.
Her passengers begged her to slow down as she sped along the coastal roads before crashing.
Dures, who runs a skin care business, was found to have 114 micrograms of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood - the legal limit being 80mg.
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She told officers she had not been drinking but was slurring her words and her eyes were glazed over.
Stevie's arm was so badly injured in the horror that she nearly had it amputated.
She also suffered a fractured leg and two spinal fractures.
In a victim impact statement, Stevie told how she had been "confident, hard working, smiley, organised and had a plan for her future" before the horror.
She also explained how she needed four six-hour operations and is facing two more.
Stevie added: "I am grieving the person I once was."
The court was told Stevie was saved by a hero passer-by who stopped her bleeding to death.
Ria Islam, who was the front seat passenger in the Fiat, needed two metal rods inserted in her broken back.
She told the court she feared she would die after becoming trapped in the wreckage.
In mitigation, Dures expressed her "deepest remorse" for the accident and the pain and suffering she caused.
She added: "My decision making that night was a terrible mistake and one that was completely out of character for me.
"I can only imagine the grief and distress that the girls and their families are experiencing and continue to experience and for that I am whole-heartedly sorry."
At a previous hearing, Dures admitted driving with excess alcohol and was fined £253, ordered to pay £221 in costs and surcharge.
She was also banned from driving for 14 months.
Detective Sergeant Simon Duffy from the Serious Collision Investigation Unit said: “This was a devastating collision that resulted in multiple casualties and catastrophic injuries.
"The injuries left victims unable to work, study or live their lives as they had done prior to the collision.
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“This was an entirely avoidable collision which resulted in the lives of the victims and their families being seriously impacted.
"The devastation caused and the sentence issued to Dures should serve as a warning to others who contemplate driving dangerously or whilst impaired. Actions of such drivers ruin lives and they run a real risk of being sent to prison.
