A drug dealer who deliberately ploughed his car into three pedestrians – killing one of them – has been jailed for life.
Stephen McHugh, 28, was found guilty yesterday following a two-week trial at Stafford Crown Court.
He was also convicted of attempted grievous bodily harm of Kyle Roberts, 18, one of two pedestrians he ‘knocked over – he will serve four years to run concurrently.
As he was led away, McHugh gave a thumbs-up to jurors.
McHugh had snorted about eight lines of cocaine, consumed heroin, drank six beers and necked 10 shots of spirit before getting into his Volvo S60 on October 9, 2022.
He does not have a driver’s license.
Bystander Rebecca Steer suffered ‘catastrophic’ injuries after she was crushed underneath McHugh’s car near the Grill Out takeaway in Oswestry, Shropshire.
He treated the pedestrians ‘like they were human skittles’ with his driving, Justice Andrew Baker said today.
‘It could so easily have been much worse for the general group on the pavement,’ he said.
‘For Becky Steer, as everyone in court knows, it could not have been worse.’
McHugh, of Artillery Road, Park Hall, near Oswestry, inhaled cocaine only five minutes before taking the wheel of his car down Willow Street at about 2:45am.
Pulling up his car by the take-out, McHugh spoke with a group of people.
Prosecutor Kevin Hegarty said yesterday: ‘At that moment, Mr McHugh turned the steering wheel in the direction of the people on the pavement and then he drove onto the pavement towards that group of people.
‘The driver’s side of the car went on to the kerb, onto the footpath, and he proceeded to drive through the group.
‘We say he used his car as a weapon – he used the power and the weight of the car to strike the group.’
The judge added: ‘The fact that it was illegal for you to be driving at all even if stone-cold sober makes it even more of an outrage.
‘You arrived behind the wheel driving too fast and too close to the pavement – unfit to be driving anywhere.
‘You drove the Volvo into the crowd like they were human skittles.’
McHugh, after his October 10 arrest in Gobowen, a village about three miles north of Oswestry, claimed he ‘didn’t mean to hit anyone’.
Rebecca dreamed of becoming a police detective, one that she was close to realising as a final year criminal justice student at Liverpool John Moores University, jurors heard.
Her mother described Rebecca as the ‘most loving, talented and kind-hearted person who you could have wished to know’ in a family impact statement.
The judge added: ‘In her mother’s words she was “flying” through her course and had great ambitions and a future full of potential.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
