A man who killed his partner because he was too drunk to notice her walking towards him in the rain on the farm track near his home has been sent to prison for six years.

John Trevor Dent, 49, ran over Rose-Marie Valente, 49, from Bingley, as he drove down the lane near Dent, Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria, in the middle of the night to look for her after she failed to return home from the pub where they had spent the evening.

He found her body a few hours later when he went out to look for her again, a court heard.

At Carlisle Crown Court yesterday, Judge Paul Batty QC jailed Dent for six years and banned him from driving for three years.

He said the only explanation for the “appalling human tragedy” was that Dent had been so drunk he had “absolutely no idea” he had hit her.

Prosecuting counsel David Pojur told the court Miss Valente, a mother-of-five, had been in a “sometimes volatile, on and off” relationship with Dent since 2003.

She was the only girlfriend he had ever had, he said, and he often visited her at her home in Woodside Crescent, Cottingley.

She also sometimes stayed with him in Cumbria, where he lived with his parents on their farm near Brough.

On the weekend she died, she was visiting him at the farm and on the Saturday and Sunday had gone drinking with him. She left the Castle Hotel at Brough at 8.40pm, to walk to the farm, and he drove home an hour later even though by then he was “intoxicated” after drinking about nine pints.

At home, Dent had a vodka with his father and went to bed, but sometime during the night he woke up and realised Miss Valente had not got back, so he took his car to look for her, Mr Pojur said. He returned home after failing to find her, but went out to look for her again at about 7am.

It was then that he found her lying dead on the track, known as Black Bull Lane, leading to the farm, Mr Pojur said. He called the police who gave him a breath test, which he failed.

Calculations showed that he would have been three times over the drink-drive limit at 4am, the court heard.

Mr Pojur said an accident reconstruction established that he hit her while she was walking towards the farm and he was driving away from it.

Although it was impossible to pinpoint precisely when – or how – the accident happened it was accepted that Dent had run over Miss Valente on his first attempt to find her, he said.

In a statement submitted to the court Dent, a self-employed builder, said that because of the amount he had drunk he had no memory of the incidents that led to his partner’s death, though he now accepted that all the evidence pointed to him being responsible.

He pleaded guilty to a charge of causing her death by careless driving while he was over the legal drink-driving limit.

Passing sentence, Judge Batty told Dent: “This case represents an appalling human tragedy, especially for the victim whose life was needlessly lost as a consequence of your drunken driving.

“No price can be put on a life needlessly lost. I have no doubt that the sentence will seem to her family as quite inadequate but I am obliged to follow the sentencing guidelines unless justice demands that I step outside them.

“The amount of alcohol you had consumed was so great you had absolutely no idea that you had hit her. It is difficult to comprehend how you could possibly have missed that fact, save and except that you were so very drunk when you were behind the wheel of your car.”