An ANDOVER lorry driver who killed a woman and three children by ploughing into their stationary car while scrolling through music on his mobile phone has been jailed for 10 years.

Tomasz Kroker, 30, smashed into the vehicle carrying Tracey Houghton, 45, her sons, Ethan Houghton, 13, and Josh Houghton, 11, and her stepdaughter, Aimee Goldsmith, 11, at 50mph on August 10.

Their car was shunted underneath the back of a heavy goods vehicle and crushed to a third of its size, immediately killing the family, from Bedfordshire, at the scene on the A34 dual carriageway north of Newbury in Berkshire.

Kroker, from Trajan Walk, Andover, Hampshire, had pleaded guilty to four counts of causing death by dangerous driving and one count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving at Reading Crown Court on October 10.

He was sentenced at the same court on Monday.

The court had heard that Kroker, who himself had become a father five months before the incident, was so distracted by his phone that he barely looked at the road for almost a kilometre.

Passing sentence, Judge Maura McGowan said his attention had been so poor that he "might as well have had his eyes closed".

Just an hour earlier he had signed a declaration to his employer, promising he would not use his phone at the wheel.

Kroker's truck ploughed into a stationary queue of two lorries and four smaller vehicles which were stuck behind a slow-moving articulated lorry near the villages of East and West Ilsley at around 5.10pm.

A man was seriously injured and four other people were hurt in the horrific accident.

Information from Press Association

Click here to see the family's thoughts on the sentencing plus dash-cam footage of the fatal collision showing Tomasz Kroker had been changing music on his phone at the time of the crash​