Drug dealer ‘used car as weapon’ to mow down and kill woman, 22

A convicted drug dealer who ploughed his car into pedestrians and killed a 22-year-old woman has been found guilty of murder.

Stephen McHugh, who has never had a driver’s licence, was also found guilty of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm.

He had taken cocaine, drunk six beers and necked 10 double shots of spirits before going behind the wheel of his Volvo S60 in Oswestry, Shropshire.

Rebecca Steer was crushed underneath his car near a takeout restaurant and died of ‘catastrophic’ injuries, a two-week trial at Stafford Crown Court heard.

McHugh roared across Willow Street at about 2:45am on October 9 last year when he pulled up to talk to a group of people outside a Grill Out takeaway.

Prosecutor Kevin Hegarty said McHugh, of Artillery Road, Park Hall, had stopped in the road as Rebecca crossed the street.

‘All of a sudden, as she was crossing, the Volvo shot backwards. It narrowly missed her,’ Hegarty said.

Rebecca did manage to get out of the way and get to the other side of Willow Street, Hegarty said.

‘At that moment Mr McHugh turned the steering wheel in the direction of the people on the pavement and then he drove onto the pavement towards that group of people,’ the prosecutor said.

‘The driver’s side of the car went on to the kerb, onto the footpath, and he proceeded to drive through the group.

‘We say he used his car as a weapon – he used the power and the weight of the car to strike the group.’

McHugh’s car collided with three people, including two men ‘knocked aside’.

‘Rebecca Steer was more towards the front of the car and as the car increased its speed – as it went through the group, she was dragged down under the car,’ he added.

Between ‘aggressive’ outbursts, the prosecutor told jurors that ‘you may well think the way he reversed the car, which was at speed and without regard to those around him, gives a clear insight into what he was thinking and what he intended to do’.

‘We say that was to strike his target whoever it was,’ he added, ‘we don’t suggest Rebecca Steer was his target – she was in effect a bystander.’

McHugh was arrested October 10 in Gobowen, about three miles north of Oswestry, and claimed he ‘didn’t mean to hit anyone’.

He told jurors that he was not angry with the people he spoke with before mowing the pedestrians down – he had reversed to pick up a friend, he claimed.

‘I am not an angry person,’ McHugh told the jury. ‘I didn’t really think about it. It was a moment of stupidity.’

Jurors convicted McHugh by a majority 11-1 verdict of murder and trying to wound a male pedestrian.

McHugh will be sentenced on Friday.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.