KEY POINTS:
A Nelson man was jailed for five-and-a-half years yesterday for killing a woman in a head-on collision last year.
Jonathon Allan Barclay, 26, pleaded guilty in the High Court in Nelson to the manslaughter of Debbie Ashton, of Hope, 12km southwest of Nelson.
He also pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, causing injury, conspiring to defeat the course of justice, and two counts of driving while disqualified.
He was banned from driving for three years.
The court was told that Barclay, a disqualified driver, collided with Ms Ashton's vehicle after a night out drinking.
He was travelling between 96km/h and 112km/h in the centre of the road before the crash and had become airborne. The speed limit in that area was 60km/h.
When questioned by police after the crash he said a man named Chris, who he had just met at a Nelson nightclub, was driving the car and had run off before police arrived.
Passing sentence, Justice Simon France told Barclay provisional reports indicated he could have been over the legal limit.
He said: "To have been drinking on the night to level that you had and to be driving with excessive speed is bad enough, but is significantly worse when a driver has been ordered off the road by the court, but ignores that."
- NZPA
