Graham Ruecroft was killed by Maria Sutton when she crashed into him while drunk and then fled the scene.
Sutton made repeated attempts to conceal the events of that evening: an hour after the collision she telephoned police to report her car stolen, and when her phone was seized by police she logged into it remotely from an iPad and deleted text messages from it. She also attempted to defraud her insurers by telling them that the car had been stolen.
When breathalysed the following day, Sutton was found to still have an alcohol level a little over half the drink-drive limit, and it was estimated that at the time of the collision she was 30-200% over the limit. She had been drinking with a friend at a pub from lunchtime on the day of the incident.
She admitted attempting to pervert the course of justice in December 2015 but only admitted causing death by careless driving over the prescribed limit in April 2016. Judge Peter Ross sentenced her to 16 months’ imprisonment for the former charge and 35 months for the latter, to run consecutively, and banned her from driving for eight years.