THE teenage driver who killed a ten-year-old boy in a hit-and-run crash in York has been locked up for two and a half years.

John Patrick Smith, 18, had earlier admitted that he was driving the van that hit Sean Hamilton in Holgate, a year ago this weekend.

Smith, of Carlton Caravan Site, Carlton, near Selby, was sentenced at York Crown Court today.

Judge Stephen Ashurst told him: "You were driving far too fast - too fast to allow young Sean to react and too fast to give yourself any chance of avoiding him."

He said Smith had neither the "maturity, courage or decency" to check on Sean at the scene, or to face up to his actions.

Sean was on the way to his home in Linnet Way, Foxwood after a visit to the cinema, when the accident happened, on October 3 last year.

The Our Lady's RC Primary School pupil was treated by paramedics at the scene, but died shortly afterwards at York Hospital.