A DUDLEY thug who smashed head-on into a family's car injuring a mother and her two young sons while driving a stolen car at up to speeds of 90mph the wrong way along a dual carriageway has been jailed.

Lorenzo Brown assaulted police officer Richard Harris leaving him with a broken collarbone as he tried to arrest him and tasered him after the crash.

The injury has left the officer in constant pain, and may have ended his career. A nine-year-old boy in the car which he hit suffered a fractured collarbone.

Warwick Crown Court heard at the time of the crash Brown was on bail after assaulting security staff at Alton Towers when they detained him for stealing a woman’s phone. He had punched one of the security officers five times to the head, biting his shoulder and then stamping on his chest and pressed his thumbs into the eyes of another.

The 27-year-old, of Ripley Grove, Dudley, was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to dangerous driving, assaulting the boy (injuries sustained in the crash) and causing grievous bodily harm to Pc Richard Harris.

He was given a consecutive six-month sentence for theft, assault and two offences of common assault.

On Sunday January 26 last year at 2.30pm police tried to stop Brown when he was seen in Dudley driving a BMW which had been stolen the day before.

Brown reached 90mph as he sped along Stourbridge Road where a police car video showed him cross the central reservation and continue on the wrong side of the dual carriageway.

He then drove the wrong way round the Scotts Green Island, smashing head-on into a VW Passat, injuring a mother and her two young sons, one of whom suffered a fractured collarbone.

Brown ran off and a member of the public pointed Pc Harris towards the garden of a nearby house where Brown was hiding behind bins.

The footage, played in court, showed Pc Harris pointing his Taser at Brown and repeatedly ordering him: “Come to me, come to me.”

Brown, who had previous convictions for dishonesty and violence, emerged and was ordered several times to get down onto the ground.

Brown went down onto his knees, but would not comply with an order to lie face-down – until Pc Harris fired his Taser, hitting him to the chest.

Even after lying face-down, he failed to obey as Pc Harris told him several times: “Put your hands behind your back.”

Pc Harris took hold of one of his wrists, at which Brown got to his feet, and there was a struggle before the officer was thrown to the ground, suffering a serious shoulder injury.

Brown pulled the officer’s radio from his uniform and escaped, but was arrested at Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital in February after being recognised from the bodycam footage.

Pc Harris had suffered a displaced fracture to his collarbone.

He told the court: “Since this date I have been away from work and have struggled with the aftermath.

“I have regained 70 per cent of movement in my left arm, but am awaiting a further surgical procedure. It has left me in constant pain and with limited mobility to the shoulder.

“I have been told that due to my injury I will not be allowed to return to front-line duty.”

He said he had joined the force in 1997 ‘with the sole intent of being a front-line officer for 30 years,’ and added: “I am saddened that my career may now be stopped as a result of this person’s reckless behaviour.”

Seamran Sidhu, defending, said Brown had a history of physical and mental health problems.

She said there was another side to Brown, who was ‘a talented musician’ and volunteered at a food kitchen and had written a letter of apology to his victims.

Sentencing Brown and banning him from driving for four years and nine months, Judge Peter Cooke told him: “You were engaged in a very bad example of a police pursuit.

“It resulted in you colliding with another vehicle, and the car you were in and that other car were both written off, and a mother and her two children were all injured.

“On that same day your encounter with Pc Harris occurred. It has for him had the gravest of medical, psychological and career consequences.

“He was an emergency worker, serving the public interest as he had for many years.

“I accept this was not an egregious piece of violence by you, it was you engaging in a struggle in your determination to get away from him which had consequences of unintended gravity.”