A NIGHT clubber told a jury she thought she was paralysed after being run over by a teenage driver outside Newport’s The Courtyard venue.

McCauley Cox, 19, of John Ireland Close, Newport, is on trial accused of causing Sophie Poole, 24, and Emma Nicholls, 23, grievous bodily harm with intent on Cambrian Road.

Prosecutor James Wilson told the city’s crown court that the defendant drove over the two alleged victims in his Ford C-Max as they sat on a kerb waiting for a taxi after the club had just closed at around 5.30am on Sunday, April 29.

He said Cox had been on a night out with friends Benjamin Thomas and Callum Banton and the trio had visited the nearby La Bamba nightclub before going to The Courtyard.

The defendant was driving and had left the other two to go and get his car in High Street before returning to the Cambrian Road exit of the Courtyard.

The jury were shown CCTV footage of a fight breaking out involving his two friends.

An unidentified man began kicking Cox’s Ford C-Max and the prosecution claim the defendant deliberately drove at him but ended up hitting Miss Poole and Miss Nicholls.

The two women are friends from university and Miss Poole was visiting Newport.

The pair had decided to go out in the city after first drinking in Cardiff.

Miss Poole told the jury of five men and seven women about what happened outside The Courtyard: “I wasn’t aware of anything happening until I was underneath the car. I remember the wheels going over me.

“I blacked out. I remember my face in the Tarmac.

“My nose was bleeding and I felt a crushing weight. I remember screaming for it to stop.

“I felt like I couldn’t move my body. For a few seconds I thought I was paralysed.

“I felt an intense burning pain in my arm.”

She told the court she was taken by ambulance to the city’s Royal Gwent Hospital for treatment and later needed surgery for skin grafts to her left hand and forearm.

Miss Nicholls told the jury how her spleen was split after being hit by Cox.

Describing the impact of the car, she said: “I heard a scream and I saw a flash of silver.

“It ran over me and Sophie and then reversed back on to us.

“It hit my side and my lower back – I was in immense pain … I was just hysterical. I didn’t know what had happened to me.”

Mr Wilson told the jury that the defendant had targeted the man who had kicked his car: “Put simply, the case against McCauley Cox is that he deliberately drove a car at the man with the intent to cause that man really serious harm.

“The man has not been identified but at that time he was fighting with a friend of the defendant, a man called Ben Thomas.

“That man managed to get out of the way without receiving any injuries but immediately behind him were two young women sitting on a kerb and couldn’t get out of the way and were run over.

“They were the ones who suffered the really serious injuries instead.”

Mr Wilson added: “He accepts he unlawfully caused injuries to the two women and harm to another woman, Emma Barnard.

“He says he didn’t mean to cause really serious harm and ultimately that is the issue in this case.”

The court heard that after Cox drove his car away from the scene it was found later that day “completely engulfed in flames” in the city’s Oliver Road.

Mr Wilson said the defendant was arrested at 11.34am after being found in an attic at a house in Conway Croft.

Proceeding.