An Amazon driver in St Helens stopped for what should have been a routine drop-off in January.
By the time he turned around, his amazon van, his parcels, and his entire afternoon were halfway down the road.
Danny Smith, 29, of Church Road in Haydock, has now been jailed for 45 months at Liverpool Crown Court after stealing the van, ramming a marked police car twice, and dragging a police officer along the road as he reversed at speed into a fence.
The whole thing was caught on dashcam, and the footage is the sort of clip that makes you wonder how nobody ended up in hospital.
How It Started: An Amazon Van with a Running Engine and a Two-Second Decision
Liverpool Crown Court heard that Amazon driver Sergiu Pop was working his round in a 67-plate Ford Transit on January 23 this year.
At around 2.15pm, he pulled up on Jackson Street and walked onto a driveway to deliver a parcel.
Engine running. Keys in the ignition. Door open.
CCTV captured Smith sprinting across the road, hood up, dark coat on, and jumping straight into the driver’s seat. Within a second or two of Mr Pop walking through the gate, the van was gone.
As sentencing judge Recorder William Beardmore put it later, “You saw an opportunity to steal his vehicle, and you immediately did so.”
The AirTag That Did the Police’s Job for Them
What Smith did not know is that one of the parcels in the back of the van contained a device with an Apple AirTag.
Mr Pop reported the theft to Merseyside Police immediately.
Within about 20 minutes, PC Javier Bueno and a colleague had tracked the van to Recreation Street in St Helens, a residential cul-de-sac with one way in and one way out.
Smith had driven himself into a dead end.
Ramming the Police Car (Twice)
Boxed in by the patrol car, Smith’s response was not to give up. It was to put his foot down.
Prosecutor Derek Jones described how the defendant rammed the marked police vehicle, with both officers still inside, in an attempt to escape.
PC Bueno then got out of the patrol car and approached the van on foot. The front number plate had already been removed. The PC opened the driver’s side door and reached in to try to grab the keys from the ignition.
That is when things got dangerous.
Dragged Along the Road, Half In and Half Out
With the officer leaning into the cab, Smith reversed at speed.
PC Bueno was dragged along the road, holding onto the door, half in and half out of the moving van. At one point, one of the wheels rolled directly over his foot. He narrowly avoided slipping under the vehicle entirely.
The van eventually crashed into a fence. Smith then drove forwards and rammed the police car for a second time before the vehicle stalled, allowing PC Bueno to finally arrest him.
By some miracle, the officer suffered no broken bones. He was left with grazes to his shoulder and did not need to take time off work.
The judge was clear that this was nothing short of fortunate. “Had he fallen, he may well have gone under the wheels and sustained serious injuries or even been killed.”
“Hearing Voices” and Other Stories
Once at the police station, Smith failed a roadside drugs test and refused to provide a blood sample, telling officers he was “rattling” and did not want needles used on him.
His initial explanation for the whole episode was that he had been “hearing voices” telling him to commit crimes.
He later abandoned that version entirely. Speaking to the probation officer who prepared his pre-sentence report, Smith said he had simply taken the van “to drive it around.”
The judge was not impressed. “The only sensible conclusion is that you accept and recognise that you told a pack of lies to the probation officer for your motivation for what you did.”
The Comment That Made It Worse
Buried in the pre-sentence report was a line that arguably did Smith more damage than the dangerous driving itself.
He had told the report’s author, in effect, that PC Bueno “should think twice about doing the same thing again,” and that the officer “was less likely to jump out of his car again and would be more cautious.”
His own defence barrister, Matthew O’Neill, conceded it was a “foolish comment.”
The judge described it rather differently, treating it as evidence of complete and continuing disregard for the officer’s safety.
A Long Record and a Familiar Pattern
Smith is not a first-time offender. The court was told he has 22 previous convictions for 57 offences, including a five-year sentence for robbery in 2019, two previous appearances for dangerous driving, and six for driving while disqualified.
His defence pointed to a difficult background. Homeless at 16, he fell into the wrong crowd and developed addictions to crack cocaine and heroin.
He is reportedly engaging with a drug rehabilitation programme in custody.
Mr O’Neill told the court his client “knows that drugs are the underlying issue” and that, if he carries on as he has been, “he is going to spend the best part of his life in a custodial environment.”
The Sentence
Smith pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, theft of a motor vehicle, driving while disqualified, driving without insurance, and failing to provide a specimen for analysis.
Appearing via video link from HMP Liverpool, wearing a black coat over a khaki green top, he was jailed for 45 months.
He was also banned from driving for a total of 52 months and will have to pass an extended retest before being allowed back behind the wheel.
The Wider Lesson for Drivers
It is easy to look at this case and pin the blame entirely on Smith, and the court has rightly done exactly that.
But every Amazon driver running a 180 to 350-stop route knows the temptation. The clock is ticking. The next stop is 30 seconds away.
Killing the engine, locking up, walking to the door, walking back, restarting, all of it adds up across a nine-and-a-half hour shift.
We have written before about the pressures Amazon drivers are under and how the route system is built on the assumption that every stop takes roughly the same time.
When the margins are that tight, leaving the engine running becomes less of a lapse and more of a survival tactic.
For Sergiu Pop, that survival tactic cost him his van, his parcels, and very nearly cost a police officer far more than that.
You can watch the dashcam footage in full below, courtesy of the Liverpool Echo.
