Drink-driver knocked over grandmother and left her to die
A VAN driver caused the death of a grandmother by driving into her on the pavement – and left her there.
Martin Illic, 38, of St Leonard’s Way, Forest Town, was just a ten-minute drive from home from his local pub.
But he chose to drive when he was more than three times the drink-drive limit, hitting care assistant Susan Wagstaff, 65, as she walked on the pavement.
Nottingham Crown Court heard that Mrs Wagstaff was thrown over a fence and ended up in a garden.
She died at the scene from multiple injuries and was only found after an hour by residents on the evening of September 26 last year.
Illic had driven away from the scene with a flat tyre in his damaged van.
Sentencing him to six years in prison, Judge Stuart Rafferty KC said Illic went to the pub with the intention of spending the night there.
He was drinking and buying people drinks and was bought drinks in return.
On CCTV footage the defendant was weaving across the pub car park, added the judge yesterday – “like a blind man, because that is what you were, blindly drunk, fumbling with your keys.”
The judge was satisified on the evidence that Illic set off in his van at excessive speed over the speed limit and struck Mrs Wagstaff, a mother of six, grandmother to 21 and great-grandmother to 14.
“The van became in your incompetent hands a weapon,” added the judge.
“One hopes to goodness the realisation of what was about to happen to her was short.
“One hopes to goodness, as Mr Janes [the prosecutor] says, that her suffering, as a result of what you did, was momentary.”
Illic pleaded guilty to causing Mrs Wagstaff’s death by driving dangerously.
He was banned from the roads for eight years – an extended term to account for his time in custody.