A former police officer who crushed his jealous wife under his 26 tonne lorry and moved in with another woman three months later has been jailed for five years for causing death by dangerous driving.
Graeme and Josephine Lamb's marriage was failing when he ran her down after a drunken row at the stable yard where they lived in a static caravan in Wardley, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, last July.
Judge John Milford, sitting at Newcastle Crown Court, said Mrs Lamb jumped in front of the flat-bed Scania lorry. Her husband saw her but assumed she would move out of the way.
In a 999 call immediately after, the shocked haulier told the call handler: "She jumped in front of us and I thought she would move out of the way, but she didn't."
The judge accepted he did not hit her deliberately, but said the accident occurred after he had drunk half a bottle of Bacardi and put his wife at risk, vulnerable as she was due to drink.
He jailed Lamb, 48, for five years after the jury took less than an hour to convict him of causing death by dangerous driving. Lamb was originally charged with manslaughter but the charge was changed during the trial. The judge also banned him from driving for five years and said the experienced driver must take an extended test before getting his licence back.
The court heard 58-year-old Mrs Lamb, known as Jo, was intensely jealous of her husband's friendship with an employee and keen rider called Jacqui Brunton, and was prone to wrecking sprees.
Judge Milford said: "I note that not much more than three months after the incident, you were cohabiting with the very Jacqui Brunton, of whom the deceased was so suspicious."
Mrs Lamb forced him to sack Mrs Brunton as a lorry driver and was enraged when he kept in contact with her, the jury was told. She smashed up vehicles, cut up his clothes and destroyed paintings. Jamie Hill QC, defending, said there was no evidence Lamb and Mrs Brunton were seeing each other before Mrs Lamb's death.
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On the night she died, the court was told, Mr and Mrs Lamb had spent an evening drinking when Mrs Lamb ordered him out of the house and he went to sleep in his cab. He intended to drive the lorry to a nearby yard but Mrs Lamb shut the gates. When he tried to nudge them open with his truck she leapt in front of the vehicle and was crushed under the wheels, suffering catastrophic head injuries.
