THERE are too few adjectives to describe Bernie McDonagh, the shameless coward who smashed into the back of a car on the M40, killing a passenger and fleeing the scene.

He had been drinking, had taken drugs, was driving a stolen van and had been released from jail just three weeks earlier when he smashed into the back of a car.

The car contained three members of a family who had been to a reunion in Oxford.

One of them, 28-year-old Ross Shears, died of a heart attack as he lay upside down in the car.

Meanwhile, McDonagh, 23, knowing what he had just done, decided to flee the scene by driving the stolen van across fields in a desperate attempt to escape. He failed. So he set the van alight.

Remarkably, when he was caught by police officers, he denied being the driver of the van.

We have the greatest sympathy for the family of Mr Shears. We also have a degree of sympathy for McDonagh’s wife and three children — sympathy they became involved with such a callous, excuse of a man.

Today, McDonagh is where he belongs, in jail.