DEATH-CRASH driver Colin Meek's callousness plumbed the deepest depths of evil - he left six-year-old Leonie Shaw to die in the road.

Grief for Leonie has been compounded by the anger of two County Durham communities - Bishop Auckland, where Leonie lived, and Spennymoor, where her killer has built up a reputation for thuggery and a taste for heroin.

Violence has been a watchword for 34-year-old Meek, from Salvin Street, Spennymoor, since he was a teenager. Brought up in nearby Tudhoe Moor, he first gained his "hard man" reputation as the leader of a gang called the New Breed.

Rival groups were chased out of Spennymoor in a vicious campaign of assaults. Meek would then, as later, single out anyone who crossed his path.

One of his nastier tricks was to put a matchstick between two Stanley knife blades to make scarring more likely and increase pain and misery on his victims.

One Spennymoor resident had heard him boast how one day he would "kill a copper".

In the 1980s he stabbed a man in a fight outside Spennymoor's Top Hat nightclub.

In 1999, he was sentenced to four years in prison for wounding another man in such a vicious knife attack that Judge Peter Fox told him: "I regard you as a dangerous person."

He has found himself in front of magistrates time and again for more assault charges and the possession of CS spray canisters and other offensive weapons.

But no matter what he had done in the past, and despite being feared by many, no one in the community where he was brought up could believe he would abandon a desperately injured girl in the middle of a road.

A neighbour said: "He's got bairns himself. His little girl is about the same age as the one who died. How can any father drive off and leave a child to die? Anybody who would leave a child like that is the worst scum ever."

A lot of people have refused to speak about him, partly out of fear and partly out of respect for his parents, who live near their son in Upper Church Street.

One neighbour said: "Everyone's frightened of him. You name it, he's done it - stabbings, drugs the lot."

Another said: "I feel sorry for his parents. They are a really lovely couple.

"You could not wish to meet anyone nicer. They must be devastated."

Meek's parents declined to talk to The Northern Echo.

The fact that Meek and his girlfriend, Emma Jane Lee, 21, fled the scene of the accident has left little doubt in people's minds that he has scant regard for anyone but himself.

The couple are thought to have separated since the accident.

At the time, police took the unusual step of naming the couple and releasing Meek's photograph in a bid to find them.

Along with this went a warning to the public not to approach them.

Speaking after the court case yesterday, Inspector Dave Hammond, of Durham Police, who led the inquiry, said Meek had never passed his driving test and held a provisional licence.

His Rover car, later categorised by police as "extremely dangerous", had only five per cent of one break working as he drove along the A688 on that tragic day in April.

Insp Hammond said: "For some reason he put the handbrake on first and then applied the footbrake. We believe he knew the brakes were defective."

He said that had the brakes been working efficiently, Meek probably would not have hit Leonie, let alone caused any injuries.

Insp Hammond added: "Changing his plea to guilty is probably the only decent thing he's done since that tragic day, and saved the family from the ordeal of a trial."

What added to the revulsion surrounding the case was the fact that Lee had her two-year-old daughter in the car with her at the time of the crash.

It later emerged at her trial that the toddler was a playmate of the bubbly Leonie, who was adored by her mother, Michelle, and sisters Jade, ten, and Emily, three, from St Cuthberts Walk, Bishop Auckland.

Detectives originally brought charges of child cruelty against the pair, but these were later withdrawn by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The family of Leonie, who was known as Lollie, said they felt let down that those charges were withdrawn.

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

The youngster's beautiful smile and blonde hair and blue eyes haunted newspaper readers across the country as the hunt for Meek and Lee was launched.

The railings next to where she was knocked down on the A688 were covered with flowers and toys in her memory.

Perhaps now that justice is done, the "little princess" can rest in peace.