Shock and disbelief hang heavy over a North-East town struggling to come to terms with the hit-and-run death of six-year-old Leonie Shaw. BESSIE ROBINSON reports on a community's fear of the man police believe was behind the wheel of the car

IN Colin Meek's home town yesterday, many spoke of his violent and criminal past.

But fearful of a formidable man, none would attach their names to the criticisms.

A father himself, the 34-year-old heroin addict from Salvin Street, Spennymoor, County Durham, is thought to have left a six-year-old girl dying in the road in front of her friends.

His girlfriend, Emma Jane Lee, 21, and her own two-year-old daughter, were in the high-powered Rover 827si which is believed by police to have struck Leonie Shaw as she crossed the busy Bishop Auckland bypass to buy sweets.

Police, who have launched a manhunt for the couple since the tragedy, yesterday warned members of the public to stay away.

A neighbour of Meek's said he understood why.

He said: "Everybody is frightened of him. We all hope they lock him up and throw away the key.

"We don't think he will come forward - he is not the type. Anybody who would leave a little girl like that is the worst scum ever."

Another neighbour, referring to Meek's two children from a previous relationship, 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?"

Meek is well known to police. His violent past stretches back to his teenage years, when he led a gang called the New Breed.

Rival groups were chased out of Spennymoor in a vicious series of assaults.

In 1985, he was involved in a stabbing incident outside the Top Hat nightclub, and in 1999, he was jailed for four years for a knife attack on a man in the town centre.

Teesside Crown Court heard how he stabbed his victim in the back after accusing him of burgling his girlfriend's home. He denied charges of attempted murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, claiming it was his victim who pulled the knife. The jury acquitted him of those charges, but convicted him of the lesser offence of wounding.

Judge Peter Fox told him at the time: "I regard you as a dangerous person."

Two years earlier, in October 1997, Meek had been charged with firearms offices after being found with a CS gas canister.

Other people who know him spoke yesterday of incidents which had never been reported because victims were too frightened to come forward.

One said: "The strange thing is that, this time, the accident may not have been his fault. We are all wondering what he was up to on Saturday night that he didn't want anybody to know.

"Whey else would he drive off leaving a little girl to die?"

There was no one at the couple's home yesterday, but his distraught parents, who live nearby, said they did not know where he was.

His father, Derek, said: "We haven't heard from him. We don't know anything.