Driver who killed Co Tyrone student Enda Dolan while high on cocktail of drink and drugs is given eigh month sentence for smuggling drugs into prison

Antrim Crown Court heard that as his prison licence was revoked, 37-year-old David Lee Stewart will not be released until 2025.

Judge Neil Rafferty QC ordered the eight months to be served concurrently.

He told Stewart, who appeared at court by videolink from HMP Magilligan, “the real penalty” will be in relation to future periods of parole and what his licence conditions will be given he has “breached the trust of the prison and effectively the trust of the criminal justice administration.”

“He really has disadvantaged himself with regard to the trust that will be reposed in him,” said the judge, “and he has nobody to blame but himself.”

At an earlier hearing Stewart, from Gray’s Park Avenue in Belfast, entered guilty pleas to four counts of conveying list A articles into HMP Magilligan and one of possession a psychoactive substance.

The court heard that Stewart had been granted temporary release in between March 11-13 2020 but when he returned, a number did packages were “seized from the shelf above his toilet” in his cell.

Judge Rafferty said those packages were found to contain prescription medications pregabalin, Etizolam and Buprenorphine as well as animal tranquilliser Ketamine.

At the time, Stewart was coming to the end of his sentence for causing the death of teenage student Enda Dolan in October 2014.

The 18-year-old victim, from Co Tyrone, was in his first term studying architecture at Queen’s University and was walking back to his accommodation when a van struck him on the Malone Road.

Having mounted the footpath and ploughing into the student, Stewart drove on for 800 metres with the student still on the roof of his van and the court heard Enda’s body was dragged along after striking the van with such force that his head penetrated the windscreen

The defendant had taken drugs and alcohol - including six pints of beer and four Jagerbombs - before getting behind the wheel.

In the immediate aftermath of the fatal collision, he tried to get away from the scene but crashed into a lamppost further along the road.

Stewart was initially handed a seven year sentence for causing death by dangerous driving and other motoring offences but that was successfully appealed by the PPS as unduly lenient and it was increased to nine years, half in jail and half on licence, by judges in the Court of Appeal.

Mr Dolan’s family have been at the forefront of a campaign for tougher sentences on killer drivers.

Increasing the sentence, former Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan said: “What happened was senseless, needless and entirely avoidable.

“In cases of this kind, it follows that deterrent sentences must continue to be imposed.”

In court today Judge Rafferty said the only mitigating features of the prison drugs case was Stewart’s guilty plea and the fact the drugs were for his own use rather than for distribution.