Drink drive killer is jailed

A teenage drink driver has been locked up for seven years after his car ploughed into two women, killing one of them.

Richard Taylor, 18, who was already serving a ban for drink-driving, lost control of the Ford Orion car, hitting pedestrian Claire McMillan, a 22-year-old single mother and her friend following a drinking binge in September 2002.

Newcastle Crown Court heard Ms McMillan, a mother of one, died days after the accident in Newbiggin, Northumberland.

Taylor, who was 17 at the time of the accident, had been banned from driving for 12 months that June after being stopped by police when he was over the alcohol limit.

Taylor, of Storey Crescent, Newbiggin, had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to causing death by dangerous driving.

Family destroyed

Sentencing him, Judge David Wood said: "The deceased was a young single mother of a four-year-old child and herself an only child.

"Your actions have effectively destroyed one family and severely damaged another.

"Looking at the photograph, it is frankly a miracle other people were not killed in the same accident."

He also banned him from driving for five years.

Ms McMillan's friend, Joanne Batey, 20 at the time, had also been injured in the incident.

Caroline Goodwin, defending, said it all came about because Taylor, who had been medically discharged from the Army on the same day of the crash, felt his life had "no purpose".

Serving in the Army, she told the court, had been his "lifelong ambition".