A 29-year-old Mandurah man who led police on a high-speed chase from Bertram to Harvey will spend the next ten months in prison after he pleaded guilty to ten charges in the Mandurah Magistrate’s Court via video link from Hakea Prison on Friday.
The court heard the police pursued Rory Alexander Dickson on Kwinana Freeway with their lights flashing after he refused to pull over on November 15, 2016.
Dickson drove down the emergency lane, with police driving 140 kilometers per hour to follow the Ford Falcon he was driving, and a police helicopter was deployed.
Dickson got off the freeway at Mundijong Road, where he continued south to Safety Bay Road, and then to the central Mandurah entertainment district, followed by police vehicles and the helicopter.
Police were positioned at Old Coast Road with lights in an attempt to intercept Dickson’s vehicle, but he u-turned to avoid them and drove towards Pinjarra, then Yarloop, and finally after losing control of the vehicle, drove his car into a ditch, where he was arrested.
Police prosecution said the pursuit lasted a total of 90 minutes.
Dickson also pleaded guilty to another chase on October 6, 2016, where police signalled to him to pull over for speeding on Pinjarra Road.
Prosecution said he spun the BMW around to avoid the police, before speeding away, causing other drivers to have to pull off the road for their own safety.
Dickson was disqualified from owning a driver’s license in June 2015, so both offences were committed without authority to drive.
Dickson said the offences occurred at a difficult time for him, when his sister had just passed away and his partner had left him.
“I’m sorry for wasting the police time and putting everyone on the road at risk… this isn’t in my nature your honour… I just didn’t know really when to stop,” he said.
His defence lawyer said Dickson’s meth use at the time of offence may be an explanation for his actions, and that he had taken on a number of programs within Hakea prison in an attempt to turn his life around.
The magistrate said though he had sympathy for Dickson’s circumstances, the offences were not totally out of character, noting the November chase was Dickson’s eighth offence of driving without a license, and that he had been in and out of courts since 2009.
He sentenced Dickson to 14 months imprisonment, backdated to November 15, fined him $200 for driving without a license, and disqualified him from attaining one for a further two years.
