A MOTORIST wept in court as she relived the moment she drove over and killed a drunken student lying in the middle of a busy road.

Louise Jackson sobbed throughout her evidence as she told a jury she thought the dark object was a bag of rubbish or a dead badger.

The 33-year-old said she saw the obstacle just two to four seconds before impact on South Road, Durham City, in March last year.

Struggling to hold back her tears, Miss Jackson said: "I can remember applying my brakes, but I was over the top of it before . . .

"I did think it was road-kill. I don't want to keep passing him off as a dead animal or bag of rubbish, but that's what I thought."

Miss Jackson, of Commercial Street, Willington, County Durham, denies causing the death of Andrew Cook, 34, by dangerous driving.

Mr Cook had been seen by other passers-by staggering around the side of the road, before apparently lying in the carriageway at 10.15pm.

Her Vauxhall Corsa hit him with such force that all four wheels left the ground and he was knocked nine metres.

When police reconstructed the scene they found that Mr Cook would have been visible 123 metres ahead, giving nine seconds in which to stop.

Defence barrister, Scott Smith, asked Miss Jackson a series of questions about what she had done on the day of the incident.

She told the jury she had been off work, visited a friend in Crook, picked up her boyfriend from Willington and dropped off his friend in Bishop Auckland.

The couple then drove to a petrol station in Coundon before heading into Durham City in her black hatchback, she said.

"Before impact, I had not identified it as being a person, but when I went over it, I realised it may not have been what I thought.

"It was just the noise, and, I don't know, it just felt totally different. It felt different and it sounded different.

"I looked in my rear view mirror and I'm sure I saw an arm fling over and that's when I said to Steven I think I've just run over a person."

Miss Jackson sobbed again, and wept as she told the jury she hot out of the car to see what had happened but had been warned to stay away by others at the scene.

Under cross-examination from prosecutor Nick Dry, she admitted she would have braked harder had she known the object was a person.

The trial continues.