Newcastle driver who killed Good Samaritan jailed for seven years (From The Northern Echo)

Newcastle driver who killed Good Samaritan jailed for seven years

5:40pm Thursday 2nd February 2012 in News

A DRIVER who knocked down and killed a good Samaritan who thought he was trying to leave the scene of an accident has been jailed for seven years.

Steven Black, 27, had been involved in a minor collision with a motorbike when Michael Ritson - on a day out with his wife Tracey and their two youngest children - pulled over to help.

The sound engineer, of Jarrow, South Tyneside, stood in front of Black's Ford Focus when he heard him start his engine.

Black drove into the father-of-three, 33, and he died when he fell from the car roof.

His wife and children Rio, ten, and Scarlett, three, were in his car yards away.

Newcastle Crown Court heard his widow felt overwhelming grief "that consumed her every waking moment" since the tragedy last March.

Judge John Milford told Black: "This was a case where there was flagrant disregard for the rules of the road and flagrant disregard for the danger being caused to others.

"You drove your car deliberately at a man who you knew was intent on preventing you from moving.

Serious injury was inevitable though you did not intend the same.

"Had you done so you would have been prosecuted for murder.

"No sentence other than a prison sentence can be justified."

Black, of The Riding, Kenton, Newcastle, was initially charged with manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

But prosecutors accepted his guilty plea to the lesser charge of causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Mr Ritson's widow Tracey asked the judge to impose the highest sentence possible for the killing of "her husband and best friend".

Reading a victim impact statement to the court, she said her youngest, Scarlett, "missed her Daddy".

She said: "She does not like it when it is light, she prefers the dark.

"She likes to look at the dark night sky and see her daddy's face in stars.

"She draws rainbows all the time because that is where her Daddy sits."

The court heard Black had not intended to leave the scene of the accident, but acted in shock when Mr Ritson approached his car.

He turned on his engine only to activate his hands free telephone to call emergency services, Jamie Hill QC, mitigating, said.

His six-year-old daughter was sitting next to him in the car's front passenger seat during the accident on the A194 Felling by-pass, Gateshead.

In a recording of the 999 call played to the court, Black was heard to tell the operator: "I have got some idiot trying to get in, he has jumped on my car."

Mr Hill said the collision was the result of a "tragic misinterpretation of each others intentions".

He said: "This is a classic case of two people who clearly misunderstood what the other was about."

He said Black was sorry and was "weighed down by the enormity" of what he caused by his actions that day.

Black, who spoke only to answer his name, was impassive as he was led from the dock.

He was banned from driving for five years.