A FORMER Huddersfield student found to have killed a young woman who fell from his car is "a predatory sexual animal, liable to attack other women", a judge said.

Ex-Huddersfield University student Ioannis Revenikiotis, 28, was accused of the manslaughter of travel agent Stephanie Hammill in Wakefield in November, 2003.

The Greek engineer - who used to live in Dewsbury - has now been locked up indefinitely in a secure mental unit.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court heard how 20-year-old Miss Hammill got into his car after a night out with her boyfriend and apparently fell out further up the road.

She was hit by another vehicle and her body was found lying in the road.

During the trial the judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, ruled that Revenikiotis was unfit to stand trial.

Instead, the jury was asked to simply decide if he did the acts of manslaughter and kidnap he was accused of, rather than decide on his criminal responsibility.

The judge ordered that Revenikiotis be detained at a mental hospital.

As the jury foreman read out the decision of the seven men and five women there were tears from Miss Hammill's family in the public gallery.

The judge told Revenikiotis, who studied electrical engineering in Huddersfield : "You have been found by this jury to have kidnapped Stephanie Hammill and treated her in such a way by so doing as to leave that innocent young woman to try to escape from your clutches and so meet her horrible, untimely and wholly unnecessary death."

He went on: "You are a predatory sexual animal, liable to attack other women.

"It may be many years before you are safe to be released, if ever."

The jury heard how Miss Hammill either jumped or fell from Revenikiotis's black Mercedes car because she feared she was about to be sexually assaulted.

She was left terrified and with her leg trailing from the vehicle as it sped off.

The court heard that Miss Hammill mistakenly believed she was getting in a taxi. Moments later she was found dead in Batley Road after she was hit by another car.

The jury heard how she had become separated from her boyfriend, James Garland, as she got into the Mercedes following a night out in Wakefield city centre. He chased after the car but could not catch it.

The court heard how Revenikiotis had a `propensity for indecently touching' women.

It was told how he forced himself on an engineering student from Huddersfield University, where Revenikiotis got his degree.

The court also heard he pestered a woman who worked at a Huddersfield restaurant, grabbing her and trying to kiss her as she looked into a fridge-freezer.

One woman, who worked at the same firm as the defendant, told the jury how he touched her on the breast.

But the jury decided Revenikiotis did not kidnap and indecently assault another woman in Dewsbury and he was formally found not guilty of these charges.

The court heard that Revenikiotis fled Britain after Miss Hammill's death.

But he was eventually traced to Greece, along with the car.