Drug-dealing 4x4 driver who ran over and killed 'one of the good guys' is jailed

VICTIM 'S WIFE LEFT 'DISTRAUGHT AND EMPTY' OVER WHAT HE DID TO HER HUSBAND

- By MARTIN NAYLOR

A DRUG-dealing 4x4 driver from Derbyshire, who ran over and killed “one of the good guys” as he lay in the road before driving off, has been sent to prison.

A judge at Nottingham Crown Court told 29-year-old Karl Twyford what he did to Steve Day was down to “inattentiveness,” as a jury concluded.

In a victim impact statement 67-year-old Mr Day's wife, Gina, said her life is “distraught and empty” without her husband, who was a son, father, stepfather, grandfather, a brother and “well-respected” in the village where he had lived for almost four decades.

And, at the time, when Twyford’s then address in Kegworth was searched, the defendant was found with thousands of pounds of cannabis and high-purity cocaine.

Jailing Twyford for a total of four-and-a-half years, Judge Michael Auty KC said: “Steven Day's wife, Gina, describes her husband as a happy, kind and loving man who enjoyed life to the full. That does not surprise me because I have seen photographs of him which reveal a smiling gentleman utterly at peace with the world.

“Precisely why it was that you did not see him or slow down must be, as the jury found, inattentiveness and tragedy followed. You then panicked and left the scene leaving Mr Day.”

Following a retrial earlier this year, a jury took just an hour to unanimously find Twyford guilty of causing the death of Mr Day, a keen motorcyclist, by careless or inconsiderate driving.