Student, 22, to be spared jail after admitting killing 16-year-old sister in horror crash while speeding

A criminology student could be spared jail after she admitted killing her 16-year-old sister in a car crash while she was speeding.

Meliha Kaya, 22, was driving her sister Elif and a friend home from the pub in February, 2016, when her Mini collided with a BMW, went over a low wall and hit a tree on a 30mph road in east London.

All occupants of the Mini were badly injured and Elif, who was in the front passenger seat and the only one wearing a seatbelt, was killed.

On the day of her trial, her tearful older sister pleaded guilty to causing death and serious injury by her dangerous driving.

Her co-defendant Jordash Graham, 24, from Leytonstone, east London, who was following close behind in a Ford Focus and also speeding, admitted dangerous driving.

Earlier, Judge Wendy Joseph QC told Kaya she would consider suspending her jail sentence if she admitted the offences.

She said: “I’m bound to say that it seems to be that the injury which she suffered, the injury that she inflicted upon herself and her family is one from which they can never recover.”

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She added: “There is no sentence I can impose which could begin to put it right. There is nothing she can do to ever put it right.

“And so it seems to me that the particular feature that she and all her family have lost through her acts a beloved younger sister, is allowing me to suspend the sentence.”

Judge Joseph said the impact on the family “must be devastating and never ending”.

Kaya, who lives with her parents in Woodford, east London, and Graham were bailed to be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Friday.