Robert Brown jailed: Hit-and-run driver who killed two children was 'high on cocaine and double speed limit'

'Our family should have had so many years ahead of us to create a lifetime of memories, but these have all been snatched away'

Casper and Corey Platt-May

A hit-and-run driver who was high on cocaine and double the speed limit when he killed two young brothers, has been jailed for nine years.

Serial criminal Robert Brown was doing more than 61 mph in a 30-zone when he ploughed into six-year-old Corey Platt May and his two-year-old brother Casper.

One witness said he was driving “like a madman".

The 53-year-old was sentenced at Warwick Crown Court after previously admitting causing the deaths by dangerous driving.

Judge Andrew Lockhart QC described the crash as “horrifying”.

The brothers were going to the park with mother Louise when they were mown down in MacDonald Road, Coventry, on 22 February. The force of the strike was such that Corey was found several metres down the road.

The court heard that Brown – who was disqualified from driving at the time – had been released from prison just six days earlier. He had been serving six months for possessing an 18 inch machete.

Both he and a passenger Gwendoline Harrison had tried to flee the scene but were held by onlookers.

In a victim impact statement read out by husband Rees, the boys' grieving mother said: “I can't work, my heart is broken, and time will never heal this. I will miss them forever. This monstrous act will haunt me."

She added: “Every minute, I picture their faces on the road. The sound of the car hitting them. Their faces will stay with me for the rest of my life."

Robert Brown (PA)

She said the couple’s two remaining sons were still suffering nightmares about the incident, which they also witnessed.

Speaking on behalf of both parents, their solicitor Rebecca Hearsey said: "To watch your children die in front of you is something no parents should have to experience. Our family should have had so many years ahead of us to create a lifetime of memories, but these have all been snatched away."

He said: “At the point of impact, Casper was thrown out of the red push-along car, which was shattered by the impact. Corey was thrown into the air, landing a significant number of metres away.”

And he added directly to Brown, of Coventry: “Your selfish and reckless driving has torn this family apart."

Detective Sergeant Paul Hughes, of West Midlands Police, earlier described Brown – who also admitted driving while disqualified, without insurance and without a licence – as "a callous individual who knew what he was doing.”

He said: “This was no accident, it was a deliberate act. He got behind that wheel knowing he shouldn't have and drove at those speeds knowing he shouldn't be driving at those speeds."

Passenger Harrison, 42, also of Coventry, had previously admitted a charge of assault intending to resist arrest after she hit a member of the public as the pair tried to flee the scene.

She was jailed for six months for the attack, which happened near the scene of the collision.

Neither she nor Brown – who has 57 previous convictions dating back to the 1970s – showed any emotion has the sentence was read out.