The man responsible for the death of a popular Whitehorse hairdresser in July 2008 must pay a $1,000 fine and spend 30 days under house arrest, an acting territorial court judge ruled Monday afternoon.

Jamie McBride, a manager with The Brick's franchising department, pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention under the Motor Vehicles Act, after charges of impaired driving causing death were dropped.

As Judge Leigh Gower heard Monday, McBride had been awake almost 24 hours as he headed back to his hotel after an evening out with the new owners of Whitehorse's The Brick furniture store.

After having a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, McBride had joined the group at a downtown nightclub.

The 50-year-old Kelowna, B.C. man switched to non-alcoholic drinks because "he wanted to be alert for his flight at seven the next morning,” his lawyer told the court Monday.

But McBride was tired. So tired that he says he can't remember anything between leaving the night club and regaining consciousness after a head-on collision with a van driven by 50-year-old Diane Roby.

During a preliminary inquiry held while McBride was still facing criminal charges, the court heard evidence that a blood sample taken at Whitehorse General Hospital after the fatal crash indicated McBride was over the legal blood-alcohol limit.

That evidence never made it to trial because the prosecutor could not show beyond a reasonable doubt that the blood was McBride's and that nothing had been done to taint the sample.

The only evidence about McBride's behaviour or state of mind heard in court Monday was from a couple who watched McBride pass them as they were coming out of the Erik Nielsen Whitehorse International Airport.

They told the RCMP they saw his car driving south on the Alaska Highway "in the wrong lane, going in the wrong direction.”

Concerned, they followed McBride along the highway for about 1 1/5 kilometres, lost sight of him as he rounded the corner just south of the airport, then came upon the collision just moments after it occurred.

According to the emergency responders who were first on the scene, the first words out of McBride's mouth were: "I'm responsible; I fell asleep. Is everyone OK?”

As Crown prosecutor David McWhinnie pointed out during Monday's hearing, it is quite possible McBride fell asleep twice.

He was probably asleep as he passed the couple at the airport, McWhinnie said, woke up in time to negotiate the curve, then fell asleep again just before hitting Roby's van.

When police and paramedics arrived on the scene, McBride was trapped in his vehicle on the highway's west shoulder.

Roby's totalled van was on the other side of the highway. Inside, the driver's seat had been ripped off its footing and flung into the back of the vehicle.

Roby's male passenger told investigators he remembered seeing McBride's blue Pontiac coming toward them in their lane and shouting "Crank it!” Roby turned her vehicle toward the ditch, and the two vehicles collided on their drivers'-side front corners.

The two men were taken to the hospital and released. Roby was medevaced to Vancouver, where she died of her injuries the next day.

Her friends and family filled one side of the courtroom Monday, choking back sobs as the two lawyers made their submissions on sentencing.

Very little was said about Roby during the hearing, but outside the courtroom, her family described her as a warm and loving woman, whose death has left a hole in all their lives.

Her sister, Linda Hill, said she was deeply disappointed by the police who attended the scene and failed to give McBride a breathalyzer test.

"They didn't do their job,” she said.

Gower accepted McWhinnie's suggested sentence, giving McBride the maximum fine, plus 30 days of house arrest and a two-month driving suspension.

In handing down the sentence, the judge repeated several times that the punishment was in no way supposed to reflect the loss of Roby's life.

He reiterated what McWhinnie had said during his submissions to the court: that a Motor Vehicles Act conviction comes with "less moral blameworthiness and less social stigma” than a criminal conviction.

However, Gower did say that because McBride got behind the wheel when he was sleep-deprived, he is "more morally blameworthy” than someone who simply had a momentary lack of attention.

The charge of careless driving causing death comes with a maximum sentence of a $1,000 fine and 90 days in jail.