Father is jailed for 18 years for murdering his 19-year-old daughter by running her over twice

A father who killed his daughter by running his car over her body twice has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 18 years.

Nigel Malt, 45, backed up his car over his 19-year-old daughter Lauren Malt in Norfolk’s West Winch after she tried to protect her boyfriend Arthur Marnell.

Malt backed up over Lauren, then stopped and ran over her body on January 23 of this year after threatening her partner with a crowbar.

The defendant then placed his daughter’s body in the passenger side of his Mercedes car and drove to the store where the girl’s mother, his estranged wife Karen Malt, worked.

Malt was estranged from both his wife and children and lived separately at a different address.

At the time, he was out on bail pending trial for two assaults against his wife in March and April 2021.

Karen Malt, fighting back tears as she read her victim statement at Norwich Crown Court, said: ‘I remember the call that said ‘I’ll bring your daughter, she’s dead’.

“I yelled ‘which’ at him on the phone, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

She said that when Malt said he was driving up to her, she thought her daughter should be “well.”

But when his car arrived and saw them in the passenger door, “the sense of fear began to wash over me.”

“I just knew she wouldn’t make it,” Mrs. Malt said.

“She was packed in the footwell. I saw her face and felt sick.

“I couldn’t believe she’d been crammed down there.

“Seeing her in that position was worse to me than knowing she had been run over.”

She said she was trying to get her daughter into the chair without the defendant’s help.

“I can’t believe how a parent can kill their own child,” she said.

“How do you forgive?”

She said she “will remember that night forever and think about ‘what if’, including what if she had left the relationship before.”

Malt ran over his daughter outside the house where she lived with her mother and younger siblings.

Lauren Malt was pronounced dead at the hospital in King’s Lynn, where the defendant took her.

Judge Anthony Bate said Malt used his car as a “deadly weapon in an alcohol-fueled residential street rage.”

He said to Malt, “She (Lauren) should have been safe in her father’s company.”

The judge sentenced Malt to life with a minimum prison term of 18 years, which is the amount of time he must spend behind bars before he is eligible for release.

He said that malt was tested by the police at the time and that 170 milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliter of blood were found, more than the legal limit of 80 milligrams.

Malt, who had cropped gray hair and walked with a crutch, bowed his head during much of Wednesday’s hearing and did not respond when his sentence was read.

Andrew Jackson, the accuser, previously told jurors that Malt argued with his daughter and threatened her boyfriend, Arthur, with a crowbar in Leete Way.

Malt, of Lynn Road, King’s Lynn, denied his daughter’s murder, claiming it was an accident, but was found guilty after a previous trial.

Mr Jackson said that after Malt “failed in his attempt to use force” on his daughter’s boyfriend and she told him to go home, “he was completely consumed with anger”.

Allison Summers KC, soothing, said, “If he hadn’t been drinking, it’s highly unlikely he would have behaved the way he did.”

The judge ruled that the two assaults on Karen Malt will be on file.