A drink-driver said “sometimes mistakes happen” after crashing into another vehicle at 141mph, instantly killing a baby and her aunt, a court was told.
Darryl Anderson sent Zackary Blades hurtling from his baby seat when he ploughed into his mother’s car on the A1(M) motorway. The infant landed on a verge on the opposite carriageway.
The baby’s distraught mother Shalorna Warner was left frantically scouring through debris on the motorway screaming “Zack, Zack” in an attempt to find her eight-month-old son after the crash at 3.15am on May 31.
Zackary’s body was eventually found by a lorry driver, while the infant’s aunt, Karlene Warner, 30, lay dead in the passenger seat of Shalorna’s half-crushed Peugeot 308.
A judge said that Anderson, 38, had played “Russian roulette” with the lives of other road users when he was jailed for 17 years at Durham crown court on Tuesday.
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Analysis of the computer in Anderson’s Audi Q5, from which an empty vodka bottle was recovered, showed that his accelerator was pressed to the floor at the time of impact.
After being arrested following the crash between Chester-le-Street and Durham, Anderson lied to police, claiming that he had picked up a hitchhiker who was driving.
Police cameras captured him saying: “I drove into the back of a car. Sometimes mistakes happen. But I’m not a bad person.” He later joked with nurses at a hospital.
Both cars had been travelling from Newcastle International Airport. Karlene, an air stewardess, had been picked up by Shalorna after a holiday, with Zackary strapped safely into his seat in the rear.
Anderson, from Rotherham, south Yorkshire, was returning from a holiday in Antalya, Turkey, from which his wife had returned home early in disgust at his behaviour.
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After drinking heavily on the flight, he collected the keys for his car from a car park attendant, telling him: “I’m going to go to Bradford to find a new wife.”
In the build-up to the crash, Anderson sent WhatsApp messages and was seen driving erratically. Seconds before the impact, he took a mobile phone picture of his speedometer to show off his speed. The Peugeot could be seen in the picture, as well as a collision warning light on his dashboard, but he was too drunk to notice.
The impact of the crash was so severe that it ripped off the back of the other car and propelled Zackary 50m from the vehicle. He and his aunt were killed instantly.
Anderson was breathalysed after the crash and found to be almost three times the drink-drive limit, Emma Dowling, for the prosecution, said.
Shalorna read a victim impact statement through tears to the court, describing how Anderson had failed to come to her assistance in the frenzied moments after the crash.
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She told the court how she saw Karlene clearly badly injured with the passenger air bag inflated, saying “I will come back for you” as she ran to find Zack.
“I could not see my baby, I was standing on wreckage, picking up smashed bits of the car and throwing them, trying to find him but he was not there,” she said. “I was screaming his name and I called 999.
“I saw the other driver and I ran to him and said ‘help I cannot find my baby. I was screaming ‘Zack, Zack’. He did not help, he never helped.”
Shalorna found her son’s baby seat but, turning it over, discovered he was not there. It was then that she heard a scream from a lorry driver who had stopped to help on the other side of the road, who shouted: “He’s here, your baby is here.”
She said: “I knew instantly. 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.”
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Turning briefly to Anderson, who refused to lift his head to meet her gaze, she said: “You have left a broken shell of a woman and a childless mother.”
She added: “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.”
Shalorna told the court that Anderson should face a life sentence. She said: “This guilt is not mine to bear. This guilt is owed to the person that caused this infinite agony. I hope the pain of this weighs them down for all eternity.
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“Nothing will bring my son and my sister back to me. The only way forward for myself is if the defendant faces the same sentence I am facing — life. The irony of it all is that I will never see my loved ones again, but he will.”
Karlene’s father Nigel Warner said that Anderson had turned his car into a “killing machine”. Kieran Hutchinson, Karlene’s partner, repeatedly demanded that Anderson look up and face him as he made his statement but the driver continued to look ahead.
He said he would be forced to explain to his daughter, Karlene’s only child, how desperately she was loved by her mother. “I will be picking up the pieces of her broken heart everywhere I go,” he told the court.
Richard Dawson, mitigating, said of Anderson: “He is profoundly sorry and through me would seek to apologise to all those concerned.”
Anderson pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving at a hearing last week. Judge Joanne Kidd jailed Anderson for 17 years and three months and banned him from driving for a further 21 years and six months after he is released.
“You played Russian roulette with the lives of every man, woman and child you passed on that journey,” she said. “The level of your intoxication, your aggressive and entitled driving, your speed and the use of your phone made it inevitable you would come into collision with another road user.
“At a speed of 140 miles per hour, with your foot fully depressed on the accelerator you were inevitably going to cause serious injury and the probability of a fatality.”
