Jenny CastertonProducer, The Crash Detectives
A hit-and-run driver who struck and seriously hurt a road worker after a 130mph police chase tried to blame his ex-partner in a bungled cover-up before being caught out by a Ring doorbell.
Anthony Tregonning reported his modified supercar stolen hours after he hit Ieuan Parry in a coned-off lane of a dual carriageway in a police investigation filmed by BBC show The Crash Detectives.
Custody footage shows Tregonning telling officers he used the closed lane because he wanted to evade police as his Mitsubishi Evo was uninsured.
Mr Parry had a leg amputated because of his injuries and Tregonning was sentenced to three years and four months after admitting serious injury by dangerous driving.
Tregonning had appeared on YouTube showing off the car he claimed was worth £50,000, telling presenters of a car enthusiasts channel how he had modified his white Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8 to make it quicker and more powerful.
Two days after the video was published online, he was pursued by police in south Wales after failing to stop for officers who had become suspicious when their in-car ANPR camera could not read his illegal number plate.
Traffic cops reached speeds of 131mph trying to keep up with Tregonning as he weaved in and out of midday traffic.
Dashcam footage from a driver showed him using the hard shoulder and a lane closed to traffic by cones so workers could maintain the roadside.
The chase was aborted when police found a road worker, who was wearing orange hi-vis clothing as he had been blowing grass off the closed carriageway, sitting on the ground with an open fracture to his leg as well as head injuries.
The speeding driver fled before Mr Parry was taken to hospital with serious injuries after the crash on the Heads of the Valleys road between Tredegar and Ebbw Vale in Blaenau Gwent.
About an hour later Tregonning called 999 claiming his vehicle had been stolen after a friend rang him to say his Mitsubishi with personalised number plate F5 EVO had been “seen flying down the A465”.
When officers attended his house in nearby Merthyr Tydfil, he tried to orchestrate a cover up telling police that he and his partner had split up but still share the same house.
He said that morning he had had an argument with his estranged partner about selling his car.
Police bodycam footage showed Tregonning telling an officer that his car was in his drive when he had left home but had gone by the time he returned.
After speaking with his neighbours, another officer saw Ring doorbell footage of Tregonning leaving his home in the Evo at about 11:50 BST before the crash 10 miles away at about 12:10 on 22 November 2021.
“You’re captured on the Ring doorbell leaving and you return without the car,” the officer told him while he pleaded innocence in his living room.
Tregonning was arrested and eventually admitted to investigators that he was behind the wheel after spending the night in a police cell.
He insisted he was a careful driver and was “driving like I normally do”.
“I thought I seen a police car… then it dawned on me the car ain’t insured,” he said in his interview with Gwent Police.
“I wasn’t escaping from the police, I just thought get the car home and deal with it afterwards.”
Tregonning told officers he used the hard shoulder because “at the that time I believed that was an emergency for me”.
Asked what he classed as the emergency, footage shows Tregonning telling his police interview: “Having no insurance on my car, my £50,000 car getting taken off me.”
He also told officers he thought he had hit a traffic cone and “panicked” so drove off “as quickly as I can”.
Tregonning initially denied hitting the 24-year-old road worker as he told interviewing officers: “If I knew I’d hit someone, I’d have stopped immediately.”
The Crash Detectives cameras show forensic investigators finding orange fibres from Mr Parry’s orange high-vis trousers on the wheel of his Evo.
Crash Experts also found no evidence of Tregonning hitting a cone and showed damage to his car was consistent with hitting a person.
The driver had also told police his Evo sports car had 330 brake horsepower but Tregonning told the Accelerate YouTube channel that he had souped it up to almost 900 brake horsepower.
“All of the modifications were very much about speed and acceleration,” said forensic investigator PC Matt Rue.
They also examined the vehicle’s condition and felt they found damage in areas like the suspension that had been “caused by the way in which it had been driven”.
Mr Parry told police he saw a white Mitsubishi driving towards him but couldn’t move in time and was spun upon impact.
He suffered a broken leg and a fractured skull. He spent 17 days at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff where he underwent surgery on five occasions before his left leg was amputated from the knee.
“Every day I think about how my dream has been taken away and I know I must live a different way of life,” Mr Parry, who described himself as a workaholic who wanted to start his own business, told Tregonning’s trial.
“I was an independent person and enjoyed doing basic day-to-day things around the house like cooking, DIY, and gardening but I have to sit back and watch people do it for me.”
Tregonning admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving and perverting the course of justice and was sentenced to three years and four months in prison. He was also disqualified from driving for five years and eight months.
Sentencing Tregonning, Judge Timothy Petts said every aspect of Mr Parry’s life had been “ruined by your stupidity”.
“No sentence I can pass can make good what you did to Mr Parry,” he added.
When hearing about Mr Parry’s injuries, Tregonning said it “has made me feel sick”.
Mr Parry said he suffers with flashbacks and depression because of the crash and said his partner has turned into a full-time carer which he has said “makes me feel like a burden”.
Mr Parry later told Sky News he felt Tregonning should have had a longer prison sentence.
“I think it’s appalling,” he said. “[The sentence was] not harsh enough for the seriousness of his crime.”