The mum of a baby killed and flung onto the other side of the A1(M) in a 141mph crash has recalled her horror searching for the tot.
Shalorna Warner had gone to pick up sister Karlene, 30, from Newcastle Airport in the early hours of May 31 after her sibling had finished a shift as a TUI air hostess.
On the way home south to County Durham, Darryl Anderson, 38, crashed into the back of them while also driving from the airport back to Yorkshire. In the back seat was Shalorna’s eight-month-old baby Zackary.
Anderson was driving at 141mph moments before the smash, was on his phone on WhatsApp and taking a picture of his speedo, and was almost three times the drink-drive limit.
As he was sentenced at Durham Crown Court on Tuesday (July 9), Shalorna tearfully described frantically searching for her eight-month-old around the carriageway after he was, unbeknown to her, flung from the southbound side into the northbound lanes.
She told the court: “I remember screaming, then we stopped.
“I looked to Karlene, she was pushed so far forward head first into the dashboard. I shouted her name, waiting for her to make a sound or move. In my head I thought ‘Karlene, I will come back to you, I need to get my baby”.
“I exited the car. I ran around to the left rear side where Zackary would have been. There was no back of the car – it was crushed.
“He wasn’t there. I was screaming for his name.
“That’s when I saw the other driver (Darryl Anderson). I ran to him. He didn’t help… he never helped.
“I was running up towards the traffic to come to stop and help. I was picking up bits of rubble. About 100 meters away I found his (Zackary’s) car seat. It was crushed. I turned it over, he still wasn’t there.”
She told how a lorry driver had come to a stop on the northbound side and was trying to help.
“Then I heard a painful scream from the lorry driver,” Shalorna said. “I found my baby lying on the edge of the grass.
“I had to pick my dead baby up from the side of the road. I hugged him so tight, a hug I will never forget.
“No words will surmount the irreparable hole that has been left in my heart and in my life.
“Zackary was my rainbow baby – he was the light at the end of a tunnel of a very dark time for me and brought joy, happiness and laughter into my life.
“My baby’s future, my future, our life together, has been stolen from me.
“And for my sister Karlene, I just have no words. I am so sorry this happened to you. It’s hard to process something that doesn’t seem real – it just feels like I am living a nightmare.
“I will feel the ripples of this pain for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I will be able to get through this – I am scarred, I am traumatised, I am petrified to live my life.”
Anderson shook in the dock as he listened to Shalorna’s words.
Mitigating, defence counsel Richard Dawson KC told the court Anderson has a young daughter.
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He said: “He now knows that he will be absent from her life for a long time.”
Judge Jo Kidd jailed Anderson, of Rotherham, for 17 years and three months. He will serve 11-and-a-half before he can be released on license.
He will also be disqualified from driving for a further 21-and-a-half year and have to take an extended test before being allowed back behind the wheel.
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