WHEN Paula Gilbert, Neil Jex and the three boys set off to visit relatives, they had every reason to be looking forward to the future.

The couple had just become engaged, and Miss Gilbert had celebrated her 29th birthday two days earlier.

She was in two minds about taking her sons, Macauley, eight, Tristan, three, and seven-month-old Kaiden to visit Mr Jex's family in Blackburn, but a last-minute decision was taken to go ahead with the trip.

The family set off from their home in their maroon Citroen Saxo early on the morning of Saturday, March 3.

By 8.40am, they were travelling south on the A1 through North Yorkshire and had reached Kirkby Fleetham, near Northallerton, when Scott Easton's blue Ford Transit van caught up with them.

The vehicle ploughed into the back of the Saxo, sending it careering off the carriageway into a line of trees.

Only Macauley survived. Police said they would never know how anyone got out of the mangled wreck of the Saxo alive, and dubbed Macauley a miracle child.

He was flown to The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, by the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, where he underwent surgery for his injuries, which included two broken legs and a broken arm.

The air crew was so moved by his plight that they launched an appeal in his name.

The so-called Miracle Fund closed three months later having raised £44,000.

Air ambulance chief executive Martin Eede said at the time: "It is such an awful thing to happen and it really upset the paramedics who attended the scene.

"It is not often that something touches the paramedics the way this has."

Macauley is now being cared for by Miss Gilbert's parents at their house in Hebburn, only streets away from the home the family once shared.

In September, he returned to Jarrow's Bedeburn Primary School, where he is now settling back into a routine. Teachers said it was their priority to make him feel part of the school again.

Family members said the sevenyear sentence handed to Easton yesterday can never mend the gaping hole in their lives.

Mr Jex's father, Tommy, from Blackburn, said: "It is heartbreaking and it has split us all up.

"I cannot explain in words what this has done to us."