A man convicted of drink driving and causing serious injury to a lifelong friend yesterday appealed to a court for mercy.

John Wardman told Supreme Court his father George was seriously ill.

“My father is gravely ill and I don’t know how much time I will have left with him,” he said.

And the told Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons: “I will never find myself before a court again, I will never drink and drive again. Ever.”

And he said he was asking for clemency not because he wanted to escape punishment, but because he wanted to spend as much time as possible with his father. Wardman added that — contrary to earlier evidence from friend Alex Doyle, who suffered serious head injuries — he was not more concerned with getting his car towed than with Mr Doyle’s condition. He said that he had been “in pain and dazed and did not know the extent of Alex’s injuries.”

Wardman, 29, of Paget, was earlier convicted by a jury of causing a crash that seriously injured friend Alex Doyle while driving over the legal alcohol limit, drink driving and failing to provide Mr Doyle with the necessaries of life.

Prosecuting counsel Victoria Greening told the court during the earlier trial that Wardman was driving home with his brother Christopher Wardman and Mr Doyle after a night’s drinking in Hamilton.

The court heard that the car hit two walls on Harbour Road and Manse Road on December 27, 2010, before coming to a halt, leaving Mr Doyle, who was travelling in the back seat, with bleeding in his brain and multiple skull fractures.

Mr Doyle was later flown off the Island for specialist treatment overseas.

Tow truck driver Keith Richardson earlier told the court he had stopped at the scene and two men had asked him to tow the damaged car to a nearby estate near Fourways Inn.

Mr Richardson added that he had looked inside the car and called an ambulance after he noticed a man bleeding heavily in the back seat of the car.

Christopher Wardman at first told police he had been driving, but after he was arrested, said his brother John had been behind the wheel.

John Wardman was later found to be more than two-and-a-half the drink driving limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood, which Christopher Wardman refused to provide a breath sample at Hamilton Police Station.

Wardman, fighting back tears, told Puisne Judge Simmons yesterday: “We did not speak with the tow truck driver and immediately tended to Alex. We could see the extent of his injuries only then. We did not know he had struck his head until then.

“I can say without any doubt that had we known Alex was injured as badly as he was, we would have screamed for help and knocked on every door.”

And he added he had declined to take the stand in his own defence because he did not want to give evidence about who was driving the car that night.

Defence counsel Marc Daniels told the court that Wardman had attained a PhD in disaster and hazardous management in New Zealand, had no previous driving convictions and pointed to 60 character references, obtained in Bermuda and abroad.

And he called for a total sentence of six months to reflect the mitigating circumstances in the case.

And he said that Wardman and Mr Doyle had agreed a civil settlement of $200,000 in light of Mr Doyle’s injuries.

Ms Justice Simmons deferred sentencing until tomorrow.

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