A 22-year-old man was this week given a suspended jail sentence of 12 months for causing death by careless driving following an accident which killed his girlfriend in October 2019.

Jay Waters was also banned from driving for five years and ordered to take an extended test at the end of the ban.

Mr Waters’ Ford Fiesta, in which his 19-year-old girlfriend Katie Robley was a passenger, collided with a Ford Transit van on the A5 New Castletown Road in Santon.

She died in hospital a day later.

Miss Robley’s mother, Rebecca Taylor, gave a statement in court telling Deemster Cook that she did not want to see Mr Waters go to jail, and said she believed he would never have intentionally caused Miss Robley harm.

’I urge you please do not send Jay to prison because we’ve all been through enough,’ Mrs Taylor said. ’I believe Jay has suffered enough,’ she added.

’We still see Jay as part of our family. I still have a relationship with him, though clearly that relationship is not the same any more,’ she continued.

Mrs Taylor also talked about how the stress and anxiety the tragedy caused had resulted in her having a minor heart attack in December 2019.

She talked about how she could ’take some comfort’ from the fact that her daughter had been an organ donor, and had gone on to help three other people - one of whom was a two-year-old child.

Deemster Cook said that Mrs Taylor had been ’extremely brave’ to speak in court and that he would take her comments into account.

Douglas Courthouse previously heard from prosecutors that Mr Waters, who lives in Glen Vine, was ’simply driving too quickly into the corner for the conditions’.

Mr Waters suffered a critical head injury in the crash, and the van driver also received hospital treatment for leg injuries.

Mr Waters was found guilty of causing death by careless driving and causing serious injury by careless driving during a jury trial in August.

Deemster Cook said that Mr Waters’ not pleading guilty had showed a ’lack of immediate remorse’.

He also noted that ’suspended sentences are usually imposed on those who pleaded guilty’.

Miss Robley’s father also submitted a statement to the court, which talked of his distress at waiting for the case to be resolved after it went to trial following Mr Waters’ not guilty pleas.

The court heard that around 10.30pm Mr Waters had lost control of his vehicle while coming out of a bend just before the Santon Motel, and had then clipped a kerb and spun into the oncoming van. Defence advocate Jim Travers acknowledged that there had been no witnesses to the crash itself, and that ’we will never know what happened on that bend’.

Witnesses had said that Mr Waters’ car had been seen overtaking three other cars between the Forge restaurant and the bottom of Brown Cow Hill, the last of which was travelling at around 40mph.

Mr Waters said that he had no memory of the accident.

Deemster Cook found that Mr Waters ’was not [driving] in excess of the speed limit, but was driving too fast for the conditions’.