• Ashley Loveday was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
• For driving the wrong way on a busy highway in a stolen van.
• And killing a young woman, Grace Payne.

After speeding the wrong way on a busy highway in a stolen van and killing a young woman, a man was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Last November, 39-year-old Ashley Loveday was operating the vehicle when he collided directly with a Toyota Prius Uber taxi on the A13 in east London.

Driver Sunder Ali, 59, suffered major injuries, and the passenger, 21-year-old Grace Payne, died.

Loveday had cocaine in his system and was said to be travelling at speeds of up to 97 mph in court.

Loveday, an east Londoner from Canning Town, entered a guilty plea to using his reckless driving to kill Ms. Payne and seriously hurt Mr. Ali.

Old Bailey Judge Mark Dennis KC told him: “Your actions on that fateful night in November last year involved driving at the highest level of dangerousness to others in a prolonged and determined course of dangerous driving, leaving in its wake two victims.

“It has caused indescribable anguish for many and irreparable harm.”

Ms. Payne’s parents paid tribute to their daughter in a victim impact statement read out by the prosecutor.

They said: “Grace’s death has left us as a family devastated.”

“We are struggling to come to terms with the fact that our daughter will never be coming home,” they added.

Ms. Payne was hailed as a “caring, sympathetic, brilliant, witty, effervescent” someone who loved kids and had aspirations of retraining from human resources to become a primary school teacher.

As the van Loveday was operating triggered an Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera, police officers started to pursue him.

When police began to pursue Loveday, he would not halt or slow down but instead increased his pace in the 30 mph zone.

Once Loveday entered the A13, police gave up the chase because they thought it would be “very risky” to continue to follow him as he travelled against oncoming traffic.

The court was told Since the age of 16, Loveday has appeared in court, and between 2000 and 2022, he was found guilty of 81 offences on 54 different occasions.

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