A woman who caused a car crash which paralysed her best friend has been spared immediate jail.

Stephanie Grisedale, 24, denied a charge of causing serious injury to Sian Jordan by dangerous driving following a crash on the C3032 at Mungrisdale on March 27 last year.

Grisedale went on trial at Carlisle Crown Court last month but she was unanimously found guilty by a jury of seven woman and five men.

Today she was handed a two year prison sentence, suspended for two years.

Passing sentence, Judge Paul Batty QC said: "What you did has had a profound effect on her and it will have that effect for the rest of her life."

Miss Jordan is in a wheelchair after suffering serious, multiple injuries in the late night crash. These included fractures to her spinal cord and leg.

She has been told she will never walk again.

Miss Jordan, of Croglin, near Carlisle, told the court that she and two other passengers begged Grisedale to slow down.

But as they travelled along a dark narrow lane known as ‘the bumpy road’, their driver ignored these pleas.

In her defence, Grisedale, of New Rent Farm, Hutton-in-the-Forest, near Penrith, denied that she was travelling too fast and claimed she did slow down.

Grisedale must also carry out 300 hours of unpaid work and was disqualified from driving for three years.

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