A SPEEDING driver who knocked down and killed a father-of-two and then drove off has been locked up for five years.

Daniel Hope was driving his uninsured Rover MG ZR at speeds of 70mph in a 30mph zone when he struck and killed pedestrian Raymond Thompson last August.

Teesside Crown Court heard he became enraged after seeing another driver, James Hemblade, block the path of an elderly lady driver and decided to teach him a lesson.

He drove at high speed undertaking and overtaking Mr Hemblade's Peugeot 106 in Acklam Road, Middlesbrough, in a deliberate attempt to intimidate him.

The court heard Hope, who had a previous conviction for careless driving, thought the other driver was a 'divvy'.

As he careered around a corner the 20-year-old hit Mr Thompson, 51, as he stepped off the kerb on to Acklam Road, near its junction with Lodore Grove.

Hope failed to stop despite passengers in his car telling him to. He later handed himself into police after calling his mother.

Judge Peter Armstrong said: "You were driving at a greatly excessive speed. "Witnesses thought you and the Peugeot 106 were racing. It was a prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of bad driving.

"You were deliberately intimidating him by your driving and he was in fear of what might happen.

"Any sentence I pass cannot compensate Mr Thompson's family for it's loss."

David Lamb, defending, said Hope was remorseful and had admitted his guilt to the police.

"He deeply regrets his actions that day. He is a young man who has been around good people in his life, he is not a thug.

"He told police no-one else was to blame for the accident but himself."

Hope, of Tunstall Road, Stockton, was given five years youth detention and disqualified from driving for seven years after admitting causing death by dangerous driving and other motoring offences.

*James Hemblade, 20, of Hutton Road, Middlesbrough, was this week cleared of causing death by dangerous driving and careless driving.