A DRINK-DRIVER who killed his teenage passenger when he crashed his car into a taxi after a night out has been jailed.

Apprentice joiner Karl Howell, now 20, had been drinking Smirnoff Ice during a night out with his friend, Lee Wise, in Crook, County Durham, when he got behind the wheel on March 14, last year.

Newcastle Crown Court heard that when Lee offered Lynsey Richards, 17, and her friend, Tracey Dykes, also 17, a lift home after meeting them in a bar, the girls initially refused.

But when they met up again at the end of the evening, the tired girls accepted the lift and Howell started driving them back towards Bishop Auckland.

Richard Bennett, prosecuting, told how, five minutes after leaving the town centre, Howell lost control of his Vauxhall Nova and crashed into a taxi.

Mr Wise was thrown from the car and suffered a collapsed lung and severe bruising. Tracey Dykes had extensive bruising and Howell had a stiff neck and back and needed stitches to a wound under his chin.

A blood sample taken at hospital after the crash revealed Howell was not over the drink drive-limit - but it was taken six hours after the accident happened.

Defence barrister Barry Robson told the court: "The defendant appears to have no knowledge at all and no memory of what happened after he had been out having a social drink that night.

"He has no recollection of the accident at all.

"He has accepted now he is culpable in this accident.

"Despite the fact forensics cannot give an accurate reading, he must have been over the limit at the time the accident occurred.

"It has been expressed through his mother that Karl Howell wishes he had been the person who was killed in that crash."

Mr Robson said Howell, only 18 at the time of the crash, had only recently passed his test and has shown genuine remorse.

Judge Richard Lowden sentenced him to two-and-a-half years in a young offenders' institution and banned him from driving for five years.

The judge said: "There must be a custodial sentence. Everyone knows how serious drinking and driving is and, where death results, no other sentence can be justified."

But the judge added: "No custodial sentence, however long or however short, can bring Lynsey back. No sentence I have the power to pass can or should in any way be seen to be an attempt to equate the life of a young girl. It cannot be done. It does not work like that."

Lynsey's distraught family did not wish to be interviewed after the hearing, but they said in a statement: "Lynsey was a wonderful daughter, sister and auntie and our lives without her are empty. The impact of the sentence on his life is nowhere near the impact of losing Lynsey.

"Cars are killing machines, especially when driven while unfit through drink or drugs, and the punishment should fit the crime."

Howell, of Derwent Street, Hamsterley Colliery, County Durham, admitted causing death by careless driving while unfit through drink.