A man has been convicted of hitting a woman with his car while drunk.

Paul McCormick, 29, from Coleraine will serve two and a half years in jail and has received a seven-year driving ban.

McCormick had been originally charged with attempted murder after running over Andrea Hall and her Fiancé Patrick McGowan in 2005, but last month a jury acquitted him. He was then found guilty of the lesser charge of GBH and dangerous driving.

Mr Justice McLaughlin expressed surprise at the jury's decision describing it as "merciful".

He told McCormick, whose defence during the trial was that he was too drunk to remember the incident, he didn't believe a word of it.

He said: "He must think I came up the Bann in a bubble if he thinks I'm going to believe that."

McCormick's mother Paula and sister Pauline also appeared in the dock after previously pleading guilty to assaulting Mr McGowan on the night of the incident. Both were bound over for £500 for 12 months.

The judge further told the court that Miss Hall and Mr McGowan were "entirely innocent, law-abiding, decent, honest people" who had encountered "the full flow of the McCormicks behaving like disinhibited fools".

(DW/JM)