Motorist Mendall Outerbridge admitted running over Raymond (Smockie) Curtis as he sped home from a night out but suggested he may already have been dead.

The jury hearing Outerbridge's trial heard the admissions made to the Police when a series of tape-recorded interviews were played yesterday.

He is accused of killing 22-year-old Mr. Curtis by dangerous driving on Malabar Road, Sandys, in the early hours of September 6, 2008 a charge he denies.

Prosecutors acknowledge that Mr. Curtis was already lying in the road for unknown reasons when he was run over and suffered multiple fatal injuries.

However, they say Outerbridge could have avoided him if he had not been travelling in excess of 50 kilometres per hour on a blind bend on the wrong side of the road.

In an interview hours after the collision, Outerbridge told detectives he knew Mr. Curtis "very well" from the Dockyard neighbourhood where they both lived.

He explained he was travelling from town to his girlfriend Leonae Simmons' house in Dockyard early that morning, in an unlicensed Subaru J10 car borrowed from his father. He admitted he was only licensed to ride an auxiliary bike, and not drive a car, and that he was speeding to get home because he should not have been driving the car.

He explained that he overtook a white car near the Sea Cadets building.

"As I was overtaking him I was coming on to Black Bay and there was a body in the road. It looked like a log. It was just flat on the road like sideways, like half and half," he said. "He was just lying in the middle of the road sideways so if you were on the right you would have hit him, if you were on the left you would have hit him."

He explained later in the interview: "I slammed on the brakes before I even touched him and tried to swerve, but I couldn't do anything else. It just happened so fast."

Outerbridge described how the victim was already on the road and not standing up, when he hit him.

"He was lying there like someone put him there, it seemed like he was dead already," he said. He told the Police he did not stop at the scene or report the collision, even though he knew he should have done.

"After I hit this object that was in the road I realised it could have been a body, but I panicked. I took the car home. I didn't know what to do," he said.

After Outerbridge reached Ms Simmons' house and told her what happened, they drove back to the scene in her mother's car. They stopped some distance away and saw a fire truck at the scene which caused him to panic again and drive away.

The Police arrested Outerbridge at his girlfriend's house a few hours later, after matching debris at the scene to the car, which was parked near the house. It still had wet blood on it. It was at that point that he learned who the victim was.

According to one of the officers involved in the interview, Detective Constable Trent Lightbourne, tears were rolling down Outerbridge's face throughout his interview.

"Every time I think about it it's just tearing up my insides," he said at one point.

Outerbridge told the Police during his interview that he was travelling alone at the time of the collision. However, the jury heard evidence on Monday from his friend David Burrows that he was with Outerbridge all evening, including being a passenger in the car when the collision occurred. Mr. Burrows, who also knew Mr. Curtis, said he had a habit of getting drunk and falling asleep in strange places outdoors.

The jury also heard yesterday from Inspector Philip Lewis, a collision-scene investigator who examined the area where the incident occurred. He reached several conclusions based upon skid and scuff marks on the road surface, debris from Outerbridge's car found at the scene, blood on the road from the victim and an examination of the car.

These were that Mr. Curtis was lying in the Somerset-bound lane near, close to the centre line, as Outerbridge headed towards Dockyard on the wrong side of the road. He said the left headlight on the car was dimmer than the right, which contributed to the collision.

Mr. Curtis was dragged more than four metres down the road and Insp. Lewis concluded that the car was travelling at a speed "much higher" than 50 KPH when Mr. Curtis hit the brakes hard at the collision scene.

If he had not been travelling so fast, said the Inspector: "He would have stopped just prior to colliding with the victim, or if he did collide with the victim the severity of the injuries sustained would have been very minimal."

In answer to questions from prosecutor Robert Welling, Insp. Lewis said there was no other debris at the scene indicating that any other vehicle besides Outerbridge's struck Mr. Curtis.

Outerbridge admits driving without a licence and insurance in an unlicensed car, but denies causing death by dangerous driving. The case continues.