A DRINK-DRIVER who killed a music fan on his way home from a concert was 'an accident waiting to happen', said the judge who jailed him for six years this week.

Warren Hawkins had been drinking most of the day, though no one will ever know how drunk he was because of the way he frustrated the police inquiry afterwards.

Judge Terence Maher told him: 'You were badly drunk and should not have been behind the wheel.'

Luton Crown Court heard how IT consultant Paul Kitching, 21, had travelled to Milton Keynes with friends from Barnton to attend a sellout concert by American rapper Eminem on June 23 last year.

As they left the venue at The Bowl, they were unable to get a taxi and joined hundreds of other fans walk-

ing along the roads. Mr Kitching was walking in the gutter, with two friends behind him, said prosecutor Paul Mitchell.

Mr Mitchell said: 'The road was wide and well-lit and other road users found it not at all difficult to see them and take avoiding action.

'The car in front of the Mercedes van indicated and pulled out and even the car behind the van had seen them, but the van did not pull out.

'First he struck Nish Topiwalla, Paul's friend, and he suffered a broken leg. The vehicle carried on and hit Paul very hard. His body was thrown up into the air and damage to the vehicle shows how hard it must have been.'

The bodywork was damaged, the windscreen shattered and caved in.

Mr Kitching's blood was found out-side and inside the vehicle. Hawkins had been travelling at 50mph and had not braked.

But Hawkins did not stop, the court was told. He drove erratically to a residential street and dumped the damaged van and keys. Then he phoned a former girlfriend, whose house he had just left, to collect him. They went to a friend's house, where he had more to drink and washed his clothes and shoes to remove the blood and glass fragments.

At about 4am - about four-and-a-half hours after the crash - a friend of his who was a former police officer persuaded him to give himself up.

Hawkins went to Milton Keynes police station and said he had been involved in an accident and thought he had hit something.

He said he had downed three double Jack Daniels earlier in the evening. A breath test put him at almost twice the drink-drive limit.

But Mr Mitchell said police studied CCTV footage which filmed Hawkins in a city centre pub in the afternoon, where his van picked up two parking tickets, then in the early evening at another pub, where a barmaid described him as drunk. His ex-girlfriend told police he had been so drunk she had tried to hide his car keys, but he had managed to get them.

Clive Sutton, defending, said: 'He knows he is going to prison and wants to go because he needs to be punished. He has said many times that he wishes he was the one who died that night.'

Hawkins, of Shenley, Herts, pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving while unfit through drink and perverting the course of justice. He was jailed for six years and banned from driving for 10 years.