A Mount Pearl man has been sentenced to four years and four months in prison for killing his girlfriend while driving drunk.

Thirty-year-old Tyler Harding showed little reaction on the video from the Stephenville jail where he’s been since he was convicted two months ago.

But it was a very different scene in the St. John’s courtroom, where friends and family of the victim, Katie Hynes, broke down in tears as Judge Phyllis Harris imposed the sentence.

Harding was drunk when he crashed his Ford Ranger into a ditch on the Torbay Bypass Road in the early-morning hours of August 8, 2021.

Hynes, a single mom, was in the passenger seat and thrown from the truck which was going 40 kilometres an hour over the speed limit, and flipped end-over-end before coming to rest in a mangled mess.

Court heard that a friend of the victim tried to stop Hynes from getting in the truck before it tore away from a bar.

Judge Harris noted while Harding pleaded guilty, he also tried to blame the victim for grabbing the wheel and causing the crash, but the evidence didn’t back it up.

She said no sentence can be equal to the pain and loss felt by families in such cases, adding it’s hard to know what punishment, if any, will deter such crimes and resultant tragedies.

BREAKING || 30-year-old Tyler Harding sentenced to 4 years, 4 months in prison for impaired driving causing death of his passenger and girlfriend, Katie Hynes, 29, on Torbay Bypass Road in August 2021. ?@VOCMNEWS? pic.twitter.com/QUejucFg85

— Brian Callahan (@briancallahan67) June 1, 2023