A mum who killed two of her children while drink-driving has been jailed for more than four years.
Lilly and Smaller Peter McCann, ages 4 and 10 respectively, were killed when Mary McCann, 35, crashed into a HGV lorry while driving northbound on the M1 near Milton Keynes. The incident happened at around 11.10pm on August 9 last year.
It should have been a day for celebration as Smaller had turned 10 years old on August 9. But tragically both he and his sister died at the scene, between junctions 14 and 15.
Read more:
A third passenger, a two-year-old girl, was not badly hurt, while the lorry driver, Simon Denton, was left with whiplash, reports Wales Online. McCann, a mother-of-four, appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court via video-link from HMP Bronzefield and wept throughout the hearing.
Stephen Shay, prosecuting, said: “Ms McCann was driving three children in a Vauxhall Astra car when at 11.12pm she collided with the rear of a lorry driven by Simon Denton. Tragically, two of her children were killed.”
McCann was in lane one, while the lorry was in lane two, the court was told. Her car drifted into lane two and, in a bid to avoid the lorry, she crashed into it – sending her car spinning.
Mr Shay told the court McCann was driving at 72mph in a 60 zone, with Lilly and Smaller not wearing their seatbelts. Lilly was thrown from the car and found on the roadside, while Smaller was flung around the backseat and found slumped in the footwell, the court heard.
A witness heard McCann shout: “God, why didn’t I put their seatbelts on?” in the smash’s immediate aftermath, Mr Shay said. McCann was arrested last September after failing to answer bail following the youngsters’ funerals, the court was told.
Laban Leake, defending, said: “She is here to be punished by this court and rightly so, but it must be acknowledged that the true punishment for this offence lives within Mary McCann. It is to that unquenchable wheel of fire that Mary McCann is bound.”
He said his client has complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Judge Francis Sheridan said that HGV driver Mr Denton had done nothing wrong.
He added Lilly would “not have been ejected” if she had been strapped in, while “Smaller would have remained in his seat”. The judge said: “There is no punishment commensurate with the loss of one’s two children and I accept that. The message must go out: don’t drive under the influence of alcohol.”
McCann, of Bamford Avenue, Derby, was jailed for 49 months and banned from driving for seven years and two weeks after admitting two counts of causing death by careless driving whilst under the influence of drink.
