A man who killed a woman and injured three others in an act “of the most appalling irresponsibility” while drink-driving on a campsite has been jailed for eight years.
Jake Waterhouse, 27, drank whiskey and lager before ploughing a car into campers in Snowdonia, north Wales, in the early hours of 19 August.
The father-of-two, who held only a provisional driving licence, hit a tent, injuring two people, before driving over another tent, where Anna Roselyn Evans, 46, and her husband were sleeping.
It took five people to lift the car off Evans at the Rhyd y Galen site near Bethel in Caernarfon. She died nine days later.
Waterhouse was jailed for eight years and four months at Mold crown court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to causing death by dangerous driving.
Judge Rhys Rowlands described the incident as an act “of the most appalling irresponsibility”, and told Waterhouse: “I could so easily have been sentencing you for causing the death of not just one person but, in reality, four that night.”
Siôn ap Mihangel, prosecuting, said Waterhouse and his friend Philip Eves had been drinking Jack Daniels and lager at the campsite on the evening of Sunday 18 August. Waterhouse then took his friend’s car and drove it into the tent containing Evans and her husband, Huw.
Ap Mihangel said Huw Evans, who had been woken by an “almighty bang”, was cut free from the tent but could not find his wife. “Later he saw her legs sticking out from underneath the car, which was nearby. He felt helpless.”
Evans said their family had been dreadfully affected by his wife’s death, including her children Lowri, 25, and Richard, 24.
Paying tribute to Evans, who worked for the royal commission on the ancient and historical monuments of Wales, he said: “Anna was the love of my life and it will be so difficult to move on, especially with the manner in which she was taken away from us.”
The court heard Waterhouse had a number of previous convictions, including for violence, criminal damage, driving without insurance and driving not in accordance with a licence.
The defendant, who cried at times in the dock, was disqualified from driving for 12 years and two months.
Matthew Curtis, defending, said his client was genuinely remorseful and had attempted to write a letter to Evans family but was “unable to get beyond a paragraph and he knows the words would never be the right words or enough”.
