'Show-off' teenage driver who killed four girls walks free

Louise Jones and Kayleigh Parry, both 16, and Katie Roberts and Danielle Caswell, both 15, were hurled from the Vauxhall Corsa when it careered off the road. Their bodies landed up to 50ft away from the wrecked car. None of the girls had been wearing a seat belt. Ramshaw and a friend in the front seat, who did have belts, survived with minor injuries.

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Last night Louise Jones's father said the decision of a jury to find Ramshaw not guilty of causing death by dangerous driving was a 'joke'.

The teenager was convicted of the lesser crime of careless driving. He received a conditional discharge for two years, was disqualified from driving for two years and ordered to retake his driving test. Terry Jones said: 'I'm totally gobsmacked at the verdict. I'm shot inside – it's a joke. It's been devastating sitting through the evidence of how our daughters died. Our lives will never be the same again.' Apprentice plumber Ramshaw, who was 17 at the time of the crash, wept as he heard the verdict after a six-day trial at Cardiff Crown Court.

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But members of the girls' families ran out in tears and did not return for the sentencing. Judge Nicholas Cooke, QC, said it was 'one of the most tragic cases imaginable'.

He said Ramshaw was 'too immature' to hold a driving licence' and told him: 'As a result of your careless driving, four young lives have been lost and four families will never be the same again.

'You will have to bear responsibility for that for the rest of your life and that is a terrible burden.' The judge, who said he had no power to send Ramshaw to prison, added: 'I urge young people and those responsible for young people to heed my two simple messages – don't take passengers without a seatbelt and speed will kill.'

The court had heard that the four girls were singing along to music when the evening drive on one of the highest roads in Wales turned to horror on November 2 last year. Temperatures had dropped to about -5C, leaving the road icy.

Ramshaw had borrowed his mother's car to go out during the half-term holiday. Prosecutor Martyn Kelly said: 'Ramshaw was driving for no particular purpose, demonstrating his newfound licence and showing off.

'He was going at some considerable speed when the car left the road, bouncing over and over.'

Ramshaw said he had already arranged to take the four girls out for a drive when his friend asked to be picked up. He said he had not wanted to drive with all the girls in the back, where there were only three seatbelts, but they pleaded with him to do so.

He said: 'They were quite persistent. I didn't really want to take them but I felt quite pressurised really and I did.'

Ramshaw said he was driving at no more than 40mph on the B4560 near his home town of Ebbw Vale, Gwent, when he felt his back wheel skid.

In a statement after the trial the girls' families said: 'No words can express the love we had and still have for our daughters. They were fantastic young ladies with their whole lives ahead of them, but their plans were destroyed and their futures demolished.

What a waste of four lives. 'Their deaths have left a devastating scar on our lives, one that will never repair. Never again will our lives be the same.'