CONVICTED (2022) | Nicholas Brian Oakland, born c. 1992 (since believed deceased), of Cecelia Place, Holgate, York YO24 4BG – caused the death of a specialist support dog after he stole a car with the animal inside.

Doberman Jake was in the boot of the Range Rover Sport when junkie career criminal Nick Oakland took the vehicle on a 124mph police chase.

Eventually Oakland lost control and the car barrel rolled into a field.

Jake then fled the scene. He was tracked down by police but died from neck or spinal injuries a few weeks later.

Oakland pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, aggravated taking of a car, animal cruelty, driving whilst disqualified and driving without insurance, all committed on February 24, 2022.

Oakland was banned from driving and had previously served prison sentences for other dangerous driving which included damaging a Park&Ride bus, driving through a line of cones into a stretch of road closed off for roadworks, speeding at 70mph through Tang Hall at night without lights and ramming a police car.

“When you are in drink or drugs, you are a one-man crime wave,” the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, told Oakland. “On this occasion you drove like a lunatic. You could have killed people and you caused terrible suffering to someone’s precious friend and pet, who had to be put down.”

He said Oakland had a “shocking record for driving” but the maximum sentence he could pass was two years and he had to reduce that by a third for Oakland’s guilty plea.

The judge concluded: “It is quite clear that this defendant’s mental health ebbs and flows depending on his imbibing of illicit drugs. His period in custody has done him a power of good.”

Sentencing | jailed for 19 months and given a driving ban.

Northern Echo
ITV News