A BELGIAN lorry driver has pleaded guilty in court to three charges over a collision in which a tractor driver died.

Didier Andre Gillis, 45, from the East Flanders region of Belgium, pleaded guilty at Bournemouth Crown Court yesterday to causing death by dangerous driving, failing to stop after a collision and failing to report the accident.

Dennis Watts, 56, of Bere Regis, died after suffering head injuries when his tractor was in collision with an articulated lorry on the A35 Puddletown bypass near Tolpuddle Ball on April 7.

Gillis, who stood in the dock alongside an interpreter, said the word “guilty” in English as each of the three charges were put to him.

In mitigation, Nigel Mitchell told the court that his client was a married man with two children who had asked him on a number of occasions to express how “very remorseful and apologetic” he was.

Mr Mitchell said he could supply a number of letters and submissions on Gillis’s background.

Judge John Harrow told Gillis: “You will be brought back on Friday to be sentenced.

“That will inevitably be a prison sentence.

“In the meantime you will be remanded in custody.”

In a statement to the Daily Echo, Crown prosecution spokesman Stuart Ellacott said Gillis had been travelling from Cornwall that day.

“He had already been driving for more than two hours when the accident happened,” the statement said.

More than 20 members of Mr Watts’s family were in court for the hearing.

One his sisters, Joan Dickinson, 60, of Dorchester said: “He was in charge of a vehicle which killed our brother. Nothing will bring him back.

“If he had phoned an ambulance I could have said he was really sorry for what he did.

“He left another man lying there, dying.”

Mr Watts’ youngest sister, Elaine Stockley of Bere Regis, 53, said she wanted to see Gillis sent to Belgium after sentencing. “Why should tax payers pay for him?” she said.

She said Mr Watts’s death had been hard on all the family, who were very close.

“It’s really hard. I have to pass where he had the accident, I have to pass his house when I go into work and then I go home from work. I used to wave to him every morning. You can’t do that now.”