Owen Scott who drove car into Yorkshire pub wall, severely injuring his four children, jailed for life for attempted murder

A man who drove his three young children and step-daughter into a wall at 92mph after attacking them with a hammer has been jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum term of 14 years for attempted murder.

Owen Scott, 29, was arrested after his car hit the wall of a pub near Penistone, South Yorkshire, in the early hours of 23 August last year. He was having a drug-induced psychotic episode at the time and can scarcely remember what happened, Sheffield crown court heard.

His daughter, Lucy, was partially paralysed, still in hospital and would be wheelchair-dependent for the rest of her life, said Simon Kealey QC, prosecuting, at Sheffield crown court. She lost a large section of her skull in the attack, which happened when she was seven.

The court heard how Scott’s other children – Leo, 21 months and Toby, nine months – and his step-daughter Alicia, eight, also suffered severe injuries from which they were still recovering.

The judge, Mrs Justice O’Farrell, told Scott: “You will have to live for the rest of your life knowing that you have damaged, in some cases irrecoverably, the health, both physically and psychologically, of your children.”

At a previous hearing, prosecutors said Scott had used a hammer to inflict blows on the children in the car, a Dacia Logan, and had then driven deliberately at the front wall of The Travellers Inn, at Oxspring, on the A629 between Sheffield and Huddersfield.

In January, Scott, of Fawley, Hampshire, admitted four counts of attempted murder and one count of dangerous driving.

Michelle Colborne QC, defending, said Scott had “little or no memory” of events in the car. She said her client had undergone a psychiatric evaluation and although he was found to be suffering from a “short-lived psychosis” at the time that was not enough to amount to a psychiatric defence to attempted murder.