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Source: ONE News
Jason Peters is a former policeman with a problem.
He is not the Jason Peters, also a former policeman, who caused a crash that nearly killed a woman near Maramarua in May, 2006, and he wants to put the record straight.
Nearly three years after the crash which left Michelle Davies in a coma and fighting for her life, the innocent Jason Peters wants it on the record that he did not drive a BMW across the centre line and smash into Davies' car.
He said in the latest issue of the Police Association magazine Police News, police staff, friends and others who knew him had been asking about "the accident".
"They wrongly assume I was convicted of a terrible drink-driving crash that saw Jason Peters, an ex-police officer, drive drunk, cause a serious injury accident on SH2 in Maramarua and decamp from the scene, only to be caught by police later in a paddock.
"I am not this person."
He said the guilty man was Jason Connell Peters. He was Jason Christopher Peters and was in Europe when the crash happened.
He said it was upsetting to be asked by people he knew and respected about the accident.
"I fear even more have assumed (understandably) that this was me and have not asked me about it and have written me off.
"I want to put the record straight," he said in a letter to the magazine.
Jason Connell Peters admitted three counts of careless driving causing injury and one count of driving with excess breath alcohol. He was sentenced to 12 months' home detention and disqualified from driving for two years.
During the sentencing in the Auckland District Court in September last year Michelle Davies, then 38, walked to the front of the dock where Peters was standing, intending to look into the eyes of the man who had hurt her so badly.
She was ordered back to the public gallery by Judge Anne Kiernan.
She spent weeks in hospital after Peters' BMW crashed head-on into the car she, her husband, Greg, and their daughter, Gemma, were in.
The Jason Connell Peters was also ordered to pay $29,000 reparation.
