CAMPAIGNERS reacted with outrage last night after hit-and-run killer Colin Meek, who left a child in the street to die, was jailed for four years.

Unlicensed driver Meek, 34, of Salvin Street, Spennymoor, County Durham, hit Leonie Shaw with his powerful Rover.

Teesside Crown Court heard that the car had seriously defective brakes which Meek was warned about when he bought the vehicle only weeks before the accident.

Peter Johnson, prosecuting, said that Meek - who admitted causing death by dangerous driving at a hearing last month at Leeds Crown Court - got out of his car after the accident on April 13, took a few steps towards his victim, then got back in the car and sped off.

Leonie, six, was hit as she crossed the A688 near her home in Bishop Auckland with a friend, on a trip to buy sweets. She died the next day in hospital after suffering head, leg and internal injuries.

Tests on the Rover revealed that only five per cent of one brake was working. The handbrake, which drug user Meek pulled on as he swerved to avoid Leonie, did not work at all.

"Perhaps the most telling part of it is that when the vehicle was being driven into the examination centre for the brakes to be tested, the vehicle had to be stopped by police officers physically restraining the vehicle," said Mr Johnson.

Christopher Dorman-O'Gown, mitigating, said Meek had driven away because his girlfriend's two-year-old daughter - a playmate of Leonie's - was "going berserk" in the back of the car. Mr Dorman-O'Gown added: "He is devastated by it. He said to me he never thought that driving that car would come to this.

"He is a man who is absolutely shattered by what has happened."

But there was anger last night after Judge Peter Fox sentenced Meek - who was facing a maximum ten year sentence - to four years behind bars and banned him for driving for life.

In 1999, Meek, who has a string of previous convictions for violent offences, was given a four year jail sentence for wounding another man in a vicious knife attack. He served two-and-a-half years.

Passing sentence, Judge Fox told him: "Realising that you had struck that poor child you stopped and then, whether for the sake of your passengers or for yourself, you drove on. That was a callous act which aggravates the situation."

He said Meek, who sat in the dock with his head slumped, was well aware of the danger he posed to others in driving a defective car.

"The danger which you knowingly created was prolonged and persistent. Your degree of recklessness in creating and persisting in the danger which so prematurely foreshortened that young life was a high one which calls for a long-term sentence.

"You have a bad character," he told him. "No sentence can repair the loss that you have made. In any event that's not the function of this court. You have never passed a driving test or held a licence. Those are aggravating features as well."

As he left the dock, Meek mumbled "I'm sorry" to Leonie's mum Michelle Aldworth, sitting in the public gallery. Sobbing outside the court, she said she did not accept his apology.

Ms Aldworth hoped the Crown Prosecution Service would charge Meek with child cruelty for leaving Leonie.

Speaking exclusively to The Northern Echo she said: "My family and I feel badly let down by the Crown Prosecution Service over the withdrawal of the cruelty charges.

"My daughter was abandoned in the road and left to die. If that isn't child cruelty, what is?"

Her solicitor John Thompson added: "No sentence will be long enough as far as Leonie's family is concerned."

He said the family were pursuing a judicial review into the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service to drop a charge of child cruelty against Meek.

A spokesperson for the charity Roadpeace, which demands tough prison terms for driving convictions where the victim dies, said: "He should have been given a longer sentence. Four years is not very long because he will only serve half."

Durham Police Inspector Dave Hammond, who led the investigation, described the car Meek was driving as a "death trap". Asked if he thought Meek was remorseful, he shook his head.

Detective Inspector Ted Edgar, of Bishop Auckland police, said he was "quite disappointed" at the sentence. He added: "Whatever sentence this man gets is immaterial. It is never going to bring back Leonie.

"It was a very difficult inquiry for officers. A lot of them have children and it was very hard for them."

Meek's girlfriend, Emma Lee, has been released from prison after serving two months for aiding and abetting his failure to stop after the accident.

* Roadpeace's helpline is 0208 964 1021 from 9am to 9pm