Drunken worker ran over family at Haggerston Castle

Nov 19 2009 by Rob Kennedy, The Journal

A WORKER at a Northumberland holiday park ran over a young family who were staying at the site after getting behind the wheel of his car when drunk, a court heard yesterday.

Ryan Barrack was on a day off from Haggerston Castle, near Berwick, but had gone there to socialise with friends.

But when he was turned away from one of the bars for being too drunk, he got in his car and crashed into a family of four, including two young children.

Caroline Turnbull and her husband Barry both escaped with broken arms despite Barrack’s Vauxhall Corsa driving over them.

Their nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter managed to leap out of the way of the car and suffered only glancing blows and were not injured.

Sentencing Barrack, 18, to 12 months at a Young Offenders Institute, Recorder Paul Reid told him: “In terms of dangerous driving this is just about as bad as it gets. Any worse and more people would have been injured or even killed.”

Barrack was nearly three times the drink drive limit when he hit the family in a car he had only bought that day.