A 37-year-old man has been jailed for four years after he admitted in court today to having sold drugs to Rachel Bowdler, an 18-year-old woman who died of an overdose in 2001 after having been left in a field.

David Gatt, who was arraigned in 2009, was sentenced to four years imprisonment after admitting to the involuntary homicide of Bowdler by having sold her drugs, and trafficking.

The maximum jail term that the court could have imposed at the time of the death was two years, but Mr Gatt got another two years for drug trafficking.

In 2006, Concetta Decelis, her husband Carmel and their son Jason were jailed for over 40 years between them for allowing Ms Bowdler to die when they dumped her in a field in the limits of Mġarr in May 2001.

The lifeless body of the 18-year-old was found in the area known as Ras il-Ġebel on May 13, 2001. The day before, she and Jason Decelis were in his mother's flat in Buġibba. Both had a drug addiction problem. At about 6 p.m. she lost consciousness from a heroin overdose and Mr Decelis panicked.

He phoned his father, who rushed to the flat and started wetting her face and chest in an attempt to revive her but she would not come to.

Mrs Decelis returned home from work at about 10.30 p.m. to find her husband tending to the unconscious stranger.

Mr Gatt had initially pleaded not guilty to the murder, trafficking in heroin and cocaine and relapsing.