Darryl Anderson (Image: Durham Police)
A speeding drink-driver who killed a baby while taking a picture of himself doing 141mph should have been jailed for life, Ann Widdecombe has declared.
The former shadow home secretary said “I cannot think of a worse case than this one so why on earth” didn’t judge Joanne Kidd impose the maximum sentence of life behind bars.
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Anderson, 38, was jailed for more than 17 years for causing the deaths by dangerous driving of Karlene Warner, 30, and her eight-month-old nephew Zackary Blades.
The pair were killed on the A1(M) in County Durham when Anderson, from Rotherham, was taking a picture of himself driving at more than 140mph.
Ann Widdecombe was furious with the sentence handed out to Anderson (Image: Getty)
Ms Widdecombe, Reform UK’s Immigration and Justice spokesperson, told the Daily Express: “I rarely join an outcry about the length of a sentence, preferring to let the justice system take its course and, while understanding the fury and grief of victims, to let impartiality prevail but I admit to being baffled by the 17-year sentence imposed on Darryl Anderson.
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“He told police “mistakes happen”. Indeed they do. My heart goes out to anyone who, in a moment’s lapse of concentration, kills another human being.
“But driving at 141mph, using a phone to take a photo of the speedometer and getting behind the wheel while seriously drunk are not mistakes: they are deliberate acts.
“The reason I am baffled by the 17-year sentence is that it appears to be determinate which means the driver will not serve anything like that, whereas if it had been a life sentence with a 17-year tariff he would have served the full whack.
The maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving is indeed life imprisonment under the 2022 Act.
“I cannot think of a worse case than this one so why on earth was it not applied?”
Mum Shalorna Warner warned Anderson will serve just 11 years in prison.
She added: "This is not justice -- not when my loved ones' lives have been so cruelly snatched away. Why should he ever be allowed to drive again, with previous drink driving ban record? Why should anyone charged with death by dangerous driving be allowed to drive again?"
Anderson did not help Ms Warner look for her baby son after Zackary was flung from her car, out of his crushed car seat and on to the opposite carriageway of the A1.
Analysis of the computer in Anderson’s Audi Q5 showed he had his accelerator pedal fully to the floor and did not brake before impact.
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When he took a photo on his mobile phone to show off his speed, Ms Warner’s Peugeot could be seen in the picture, as well as a collision warning light illuminated on his dashboard.
Anderson lied and told police that a hitchhiker was behind the wheel when his powerful SUV slammed into Ms Warner’s car.
But he pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
Emma Dowling, prosecuting, said a roadside breath test showed Anderson was almost three times over the drink-drive limit.
He had been drinking on the plane home from a holiday he curtailed after his erratic behaviour made his wife leave separately, the court heard.
Police found an empty vodka bottle in his car.
Witnesses saw him driving dangerously in the 20 miles he had travelled from Newcastle Airport before the collision, and analysis showed he sent messages on WhatsApp.
At a police station, Anderson, of Clarell Walk, Thorpe Hesley, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, told officers: “I drove into the back of a car.
“Sometimes mistakes happen. But I’m not a bad person.”
Ms Warner recalled in vivid detail her car being spun round, seeing her sister seriously injured, then frantically looking for her son, screaming his name as she searched, after the back of her car had disintegrated in the impact.
She told the court she was in the road picking up pieces of debris, trying to find Zackary’s car seat, and that a lorry driver eventually found him on the other side of the carriageway.
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.
“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.
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“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.”
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