United players are jailed for high-speed racing

A MANCHESTER United player who took part in a high-speed road race which caused a crash and left two people hurt was yesterday imprisoned.

Mads Timm, 20, and his 19-year-old former team-mate Callum Flanagan, who has since left the club, sped along a 40mph road in Partington, Manchester, after finishing a training session at around 1pm on January 14 last year.

They had been racing along roads in convoy at high speed when the crash happened.

Yesterday at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court, Timm was sentenced to 12 months in a young offenders’ institution and Flanagan was sentenced to eight months.

They were both also disqualified from driving for three years.

The court heard how Timm and Flanagan used their high-powered cars to race each other after leaving Manchester United’s Carrington training ground.

Flanagan lost control of his black Honda Civic on a bend and crashed with another car driven by Angela Bourne.

She suffered heel and knee injuries and a passenger in Flanagan’s car, team-mate Phil Marsh, 17, had to be cut from the wreckage.

Flanagan, described in court as a boy racer admitted dangerous driving but Timm denied the charge.

The seven-man, five-woman jury took less than an hour to convict Timm of dangerous driving at his trial last month.

Timm, from Bowden, Cheshire, driving a powerful silver Mitsubishi Evolution, led the chase and drove round a right-hand bend.

Flanagan, of Ludgate Hill, Manchester, followed in his Honda Civic but lost control of the car and collided with the oncoming vehicle.

Witnesses reported seeing the players exchanging taunts and gesticulating to each another prior to the crash.

In sentencing the pair, Judge Adrian Smith said: “It is pure luck that nobody was killed.”

The judge told the court that the youngsters were men of “exemplary character” who had achieved a great deal and that he was imposing the sentences with “regret.”