A DRIVER who ran over and killed a mother-of-two after she fell into the road has been jailed.

Bolton Crown Court heard Tinashe Chikoto ran over Louise Wolstenholme as she lay on Bow Street – then dragged her body along for 100m.

He pulled over in a side street, got out of his Ford Focus and saw the victim's body trapped under his car but did nothing to help after the incident at 10pm on January 31, the court was told.

The 22-year-old – who had no insurance or a full driving licence – abandoned his hatchback and was driven away by a friend in a Toyota Avensis following behind.

UPDATE: Chikoto's friends Ludovic Mabiala and Nqobile Mariwandi have admitted assisting an offender and will be sentenced next month

Chikoto telephoned police to claim his car had been stolen and called back 40 minutes later to retract his false report.

The court heard officers called at Chikoto's Devonshire Road, Atherton, home and accompanied him back to the scene where Ms Wolstenholme's body had been underneath the Focus for at least an hour and a half.

Judge Timothy Clayson called the defendant's actions "callous and selfish".

He told him: "You allege that you thought you had collided with nothing more than a bag of rubbish but it was clear from the force of collision it was more serious than that. You caused a delay in the provision of any possible assistance to Louise Wolstenholme, who was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after.

"No-one can tell whether if you had stopped immediately after this collision, her life may have been saved.

"That's something you will have to live with."

On the night she died Ms Wolstenholme, whose ran Louise's Hair Studio in Bury Road, Bolton, had drunk eight double vodkas and had become separated from her partner following an argument.

Minutes before Chikoto's car hit the victim a single-decker bus, a taxi and a second car all saw her and managed to swerve to avoid her in well-lit conditions.

Chikoto, a business management student at the University of Bolton, earlier admitted causing death by careless driving, causing death while uninsured, driving without insurance and perverting the course of justice.

He was jailed today for 16 months for the first offence and for a consecutive six months for the third offence with no separate penalty for two other offences. Chikoto was disqualified from driving for 41 months and will have to sit an extended driving test.

He was acquitted of causing death by dangerous driving when prosecutors offered no evidence.