OXFORD’S one-time most-wanted man has been convicted of a hit-and-run attack on the city’s Blackbird Leys estate.

Rohan Crooks mowed down Orville ‘Dean’ Francis in his green Lexus on October 9, 2008, before going on the run for more than two years.

After appearances in the national media and on Crimewatch, the 34-year-old finally handed himself in to a London police station in February.

Yesterday, at Oxford Crown Court ,jurors convicted him of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

On the first day of his trial, before the jury was sworn in, he admitted dangerous driving, and during the case also admitted causing GBH.

Jurors acquitted him of attempted murder and of an earlier incident of having a knife.

The trial heard the hit-and-run incident occurred in daylight at about 5.30pm in Cuddesdon Way as Crooks swerved on to the pavement to hit Mr Francis. The 33-year-old victim was dragged under the car and suffered multiple life-threatening injuries that required a three-week stay in Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital.

Giving evidence, Crooks said he had been put under a lot of strain at the time of the incident after his brother had been shot dead in his native Jamaica a month earlier.

He told the jury he had been confronted by Mr Francis and two of his friends outside shops in Blackbird Leys Road before jumping into his car with passenger Kerissa Lawrence.

Crooks, a barber who was living in Sturge Avenue, Walthamstow, London, but had links to Blackbird Leys, told the court: “I was furious at the time because they (Mr Francis and his friends) had just tried to kill me, stab me up, making threats against my life. I had just lost my brother, all of them things.”

He added: “I swung my car at him (Mr Francis). When I swung my car at him I didn’t do it with no intention of danger, (nor) want to kill him.

“I was just furious at the time, I was going through a lot of emotions, it just happened.

“I didn’t have no intentions to hurt, my intention was just to scare.”

Crooks’s J-reg Lexus IS200, which he had paid £2,500 for a month earlier, was found burnt out in Horton-cum-Studley at the end of October 2008.

The defendant, who was cautioned for having an offensive weapon after brandishing a wheel brace in Blackbird Leys in the week before the driving incident, was remanded in custody to be sentenced on Monday.