A VAN driver who knocked down and killed a pedestrian told police in a tearful interview: “I just wished it was me lying there instead of her.”

Stephen Yorke maintained he never saw dog-walker Carol Robson as he pulled away from a factory in Bishop Auckland.

He said he felt an impact on the passenger-side wheel of the Mercedes Sprinter, but thought it might have been a pot-hole, brick or a piece of wood.

Mr Yorke told investigators last year: “At no point until I got to the back wheels did I think I had anything to worry about. Then my heart sank.”

The 54-year-old is on trial at Teesside Crown Court where de denies a charge of causing death by careless driving on the morning of December 21, 2015.

A jury heard details of his two interviews with police, before Mr Yorke, of Northumberland Avenue, Bishop Auckland, gave evidence.

He told officers how he cuddled Mrs Robson after finding her badly injured in the road, stroked her face, tried to get her to talk and screamed for help.

People working on the South Church Enterprise Park rushed to the scene, an ambulance was called, but Mrs Robson, 58, was pronounced dead in hospital an hour later.

Mr Yorke said in an interview a week after the tragedy: “I scanned the road. I scanned both sides and saw nothing, no vehicle, no person, nothing untoward.

“She was obviously in a bad way. I panicked. I was in shock. I never saw her, never saw anyone in the street, never saw a soul. It was pitch black.

“I just kept talking to her and stroking her face, saying ‘please, please, please God. I just [at which point he started crying] wish it was me lying there instead of her.”

Mr Yorke was asked by his barrister, Mark Styles, if his lengthy account to the police about the aftermath was accurate. He replied: “I did my best.”

He had been to “clock-on” at work at Teescraft Engineering at about 7am, and spoke to colleagues before getting back into his van to visit another factory.

The van would have been coming down a dropped kerb to join the main carriageway, Longfield Road, when the collision occurred, the jury heard.

The trial continues.