WANGARATTA man Kenneth “Kenny” Ritchens will spend at least 4½ years in prison for a car crash that killed Whorouly man Chris Power.

Ritchens, who pleaded guilty to culpuble driving causing death and obtaining property by deception of an insurance company, was sentenced in Shepparton County Court yesterday afternoon.

The 31-year-old received a six-year and three-month maximum prison term with a four- year and six-month non-parole period.

Ritchens’ driver’s license was also cancelled for three years.

Chris Power was 40 when he was killed in June 2008 after the car he was in left the road and smashed into a tree on Oxley Flats Road near Wangaratta.

Investigators said Ritchens fled the scene and fabricated the story that his car had been stolen by Mr Power.

A three-day committal hearing in February heard Ritchens had confessed to killing someone in the crash.

A policeman visited Ritchens the morning of the crash and noted blood on his face, a swollen eye and that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

He told the policeman his car, a Ford Fairmont sedan, had been stolen.

Ritchens was charged in April last year.