FORMER Premier League footballer and Jamaica international Marlon King has been jailed for 18 months yesterday for dangerous driving after a crash which left a motorist with a broken arm.

The much-travelled former Watford, Wigan and Sheffield United striker had pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving at Nottingham Crown Court in March.

Sentencing King at the same court, Recorder Paul Mann, QC said: “I do not regard your case as merely impulsive or silly behaviour.

“It was aggressive. It was arrogant.”

The court heard King had been eating an ice cream at the wheel when he caused a three-car pile up on the A46 in Nottinghamshire last April.

The judge also handed King a three-year driving ban.

The court heard that King committed the offence on his 33rd birthday while driving a white 2011 Porsche Panamera.

He was eating an ice cream he had bought from a McDonald’s just moments before the crash, which happened around 3:00 pm on April 26.

King was seen weaving in and out of traffic before he undertook Martin Beck, whom he perceived as travelling too slowly in the outer lane of the A46, the court heard.

The former footballer slammed on his brakes in frustration, forcing Beck to perform an emergency stop in his black VW Polo.

As Beck came to a halt, another driver in a silver Vauxhall Astra, who had pulled out behind him, collided with the stationary Polo.

The ‘concertina effect’ forced the Polo into the back of King’s Porsche.

Beck had to be cut out of his car and airlifted to hospital after the collision at Winthorpe, near Newark. He spent three weeks in hospital and required surgery for a fractured and dislocated forearm.

Mark Bush, who was travelling in the Astra, was also taken to hospital for cuts and bruises. The court heard that King drove off from the scene but was flagged down by another motorist who feared Beck had been killed by the collision.

King returned to Beck’s car, where he blamed the driver for the collision.

The judge told King: “You were so pumped up with road rage, you had to start accusing him of being to blame for these collisions.”

As of October 2009, King had convictions for 14 offences. He received fines, driving bans, community service sentences, a rehabilitation order and orders to pay compensation on convictions including theft from a person and from a car, criminal damage, and attempting to obtain property by deception; fraudulent use of vehicle licence document, driving without insurance, speeding, drunk driving; a wounding incident while playing amateur football.

In December 2008, in the Soho area of London, King was arrested on suspicion of punching a 20-year-old female university student in the face, causing a broken nose and split lip for which she was treated in hospital. He was later convicted of sexual assault and assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and sentenced to 18 months in prison and placed on the Sex Offender Register for seven years.

In 2004 King played an important part in Jamaica’s unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, scoring six goals in eight games. He played for Jamaica in the friendly against Ghana on May 29, 2006 which they lost. He was then named in the squad to face England in a friendly on June 3, 2006, but was sent home for an alleged breach of discipline.

As a result of the incident, the Crenston Boxhill-led Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) banned King from international football until May 2008. When Captain Horace Burrell returned as the JFF president he lifted the ban.

King then made his first appearance for Jamaica since 2009 as a second-half substitute in a 1-0 friendly defeat to Panama on 27 May 2012, and played in the next game, again as a substitute.

He and Chris Humphrey were then suspended from the next two World Cup qualifiers for breaking curfew and were not selected again after the suspension by the Theodore Whitmore-led coaching staff. In frustration, King announced his retirement from international football in November 2012.

After the resignation of Whitmore, new coach Winfried Schäefer recalled King to the team for the World Cup qualifiers in September 2013.

In a career of 22 senior international appearances, the enigmatic King scored

12 goals.

— Daily Mail/Observer