A banned driver who killed a six-year-old girl in Newcastle, England, when he ploughed into her family's hatchback on New Year's Eve was jailed for 9½ years yesterday.
Ian Carr (27), who fled after the stolen vehicle he was driving smashed into the Sawyer family's car, had been released from prison on licence only a few months before the tragedy.
Yesterday the parents of his victim, Rebecca Sawyer, said he should have been given life.
Carr, who as a teenager left a friend dying when he fled the scene of another crash he caused, would drive again when released from prison, they warned.
Judge David Hodson was told at Newcastle Crown Court that Carr had already been before the courts 25 times. He had a total of 89 previous convictions including 10 for driving while disqualified.
Sentencing him, Judge Hodson ordered him to complete the 688 days outstanding from his previous sentence before he beginning the term imposed today. The maximum sentence that could have been passed is 10 years.
Judge Hodson told an expressionless Carr: "Nothing I can say can adequately describe the revulsion that the community feels at what you have done.
"The circumstances of this offence, which have caused the death of a much-loved little girl and inflicted critical injuries to her baby sister, have torn at the hearts of people throughout this region and, indeed, farther afield as well."
In 1998 Carr was jailed for six years and nine months for a string of offences, including driving while disqualified. He was released in October 2002 just months before the stolen car he was driving slammed into the Sawyer family's hatchback, killing Rebecca. - (PA)