Six years for taxi driver's death

A SUICIDAL motorist who, by "grotesque irony", survived a crash but caused the death of a taxi driver has been jailed for six years.

Halim Cholmeley's car struck the taxi on the passenger side.

Its driver, Gavin McCabe, 41, had not been wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from his vehicle, sustaining fatal brain injuries. A passenger suffered minor injuries.

Cholmeley, 36, a banned driver who had been drinking, told witnesses that it had been his intention to end his own life when he took his girlfriend's BMW car without her knowledge and sped through the centre of Dundee at about 70mph. "The grotesque irony is that he lived and the other man died," defence counsel Matthew Jackson told the High Court in Edinburgh.

A relative of Mr McCabe, who did not want to be named, said: "A six-year sentence will never make up for the fact we have lost Gavin. (Cholmeley] will be back with his family in four years but we will never have Gavin back."

Cholmeley, a former recruitment consultant, of Glenprosen, Angus, admitted causing Mr McCabe's death by dangerous driving on 15 March last year.

Mr McCabe, of Perth, lived with his partner and her children, and had three children from a previous marriage.

Private-hire drivers, such as Mr McCabe, are not required by law to wear a seatbelt while they have a hire in the car, allowing them greater freedom to protect themselves in the event of an attack.