THE girlfriend of hit-and-run victim Ben Coulson told today how she had lost the "perfect partner".

Carole Marsh said: "We were absolutely inseparable. We did everything together. We were the perfect couple."

She revealed how Ben had been about to start a new job in IT after years of part-time and menial work when he was mown down last year in Green Lane, Acomb, by Joseph Richardson.

"I remember him saying: "I am on the up now, and there's no stopping me. I am going to make a future for myself."

Carole, of Tudor Road, Acomb, was speaking out for the first time about her loss, after Richardson was jailed for five years and banned from driving for ten years by a judge at York Crown Court.

She said she did not believe five years was enough for a man who had driven for 38 years without a licence, and who careered into Ben at almost twice the speed limit before driving off.

"I do not think he got what he deserved," she said. "He always thought he was above the law. The accident was something that was waiting to happen."

She said she had met Ben in Toffs Nightclub about a year before he died and enjoyed a friendship before it developed into a relationship.

They shared common interests, including a love of fishing - Ben was a talented angler. The couple went fishing together during a holiday together in Tenerife, only months before he died.

"We were so compatible," she said. "I am so happy I met him."

She said Ben was intelligent and well-educated, but had had a series of part-time and fairly menial jobs before getting a job in IT in York just before the accident.

"We used to scour the Sits Vac in the Evening Press to look for a job for him. We found one and he was going to start on the Monday. It was very hard to ring them up and say he wasn't going to be there."

Carole, a staff nurse at York Hospital, who is trained in counselling, said she herself had received counselling from the charity Road Peace since the accident.

She thanked friends and the people of Acomb for their support since Ben's death.

Updated: 10:29 Thursday, June 23, 2005