A 19-year-old man is facing custody after a jury found him guilty of killing his friend in a road tragedy.

At Maidstone Crown Court Matthew Bell’s lawyer Ian McLaughlin made a strong plea for bail to be granted until sentence is passed next month.

But Judge Adele Williams told him: “I do not believe in playing cat and mouse with people and a custodial sentence is inevitable.”

Family members of both Bell and victim James Bollom, 16, wept after a jury returned a guilty verdict of causing death by dangerous driving.

The court heard that Bell had only held a full driving licence for 10 days when he drove too fast and crashed into another car and then into a stone wall.

He was driving his girlfriend’s Vauxhall Corsa and did not have insurance cover.

Paul Cavin, prosecuting, said Bell was travelling at a speed “approaching 75mph” as he hit the oncoming car.

Mr Bollom, who lived in both Bearsted and West Malling, was dead before emergency services arrived on the scene on the A26 Tonbridge Road in Maidstone.

Bell, of Baxter Way, Kings Hill, West Malling, and his friend were heading into Maidstone to go Christmas shopping on Sunday, December 4, 2005.

Mr Bollom, who had known Bell for about three years, was in the front passenger seat.

Travelling in the opposite direction was schoolteacher Colin Leith, who was taking his son and two other youths to play in a football match in Tonbridge.

Mr Cavin said Mr Leith had just left the village of Wateringbury in his Ford Mondeo and travelled along the A26, which has a 60mph speed limit.

The Corsa suddenly veered across into the opposite carriageway and hit the Mondeo side on.

The Corsa carried on into the verge and hit the wall. Bell was slumped in his seat unconscious. He was freed from the wreckage and taken to hospital.

When later interviewed, Bell, who denied the charge, claimed he was travelling at about 40-45mph when a fox or a cat ran in front of his car.

“My instant reaction was to swerve,” he said. “The next thing there was banging at the side and that was it.”

But Mr Cavin said the Corsa was going faster than Bell said. An accident investigator checked skidmarks and estimated that car’s speed was approaching 75mph when it crossed the carriageway.

“We say the skidmarks are not long enough to indicate it was the immediate result of an animal darting into the road,” said the prosecutor.

“Human reaction time would have been of the order of a second, in which case he would have been way past the Mondeo.”

Adjourning sentence for reports to Canterbury Crown Court on March 2, Judge Williams said: “He must be under no illusions that the report will only go as to the inevitable length of a custodial sentence.”

In a statement read out in court, James Bollom’s father, Michael, said: “Family life as I knew it ended dramatically on December 4, 2005 when my beloved son James was killed in a car accident.

“James had always been our number one priority. He seemed to be phased by nothing and never had a bad word to say about anyone.

“March 20 was another tragedy in our life. Samantha, James’ mum, took her life because the memory of his life haunted her.

“She could not bear the thought that James was not with us any more. Everywhere we look in the house he is there. We talk about it everyday.

“We are not a family looking for revenge, we are a family looking for justice; justice for James and justice for our family.