A heartbroken mum confronted a ‘selfish’ driver after he killed her son by going almost 70 miles over the speed limit while swigging alcohol at the wheel.
Andrew Price, 27, lowered his head in shame in court as Lynn Edwards told him he’d ‘never understand the pain and grief’ of losing a child.
Her son Adam Edwards, 19, was left with catastrophic internal injuries and suffered a cardiac arrest after Price smashed a black Lexus into parked cars and front gardens at 76mph.
He had hit nearly 100mph as he overtook vehicles in 30 zones on the wrong side of wet roads in Haydock, Merseyside, prosecutors said.
Front seat passenger Anthony Finch, 25, said his life had been ‘ruined’ after he was left in a three-month coma with life-changing injuries.
Third passenger Matthew Williamson collapsed with injuries to his knee and pelvis after the crash on Vista Road in December 2019.
Price has been jailed for nine years after admitting causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving at Liverpool Crown Court.
In an emotional victim impact statement, Mrs Edwards said Adam would have just celebrated his 21st birthday if he was alive.
She said: ’Instead Adam was cruelly taken from us. Not in a tragic accident, but instead by the selfish choices made by the driver of the car he was travelling in.
‘The driver of that vehicle will never understand the pain and grief we as a family have gone through and always will be going through.
‘Losing Adam has changed our lives forever and our lives will never be the same without Adam.’
She continued: ‘All our lives were turned upside down on the evening of Wednesday, December 11, 2019, when we were awoken at home by two police officers who had called to tell us that Adam had died in a car crash earlier that night.
‘How do you deal with that type of news? I’m not sure that you do. Or certainly I haven’t yet nearly two years after he was killed.’
Mrs Edwards said she and husband Lee had tried to hold things together for the past two years for Adam’s older brother and younger brother and sister.
But her family had faced ‘anxiety and sleepless nights’ after the gut-wrenching crash.
She said: ‘I am so proud of my kids for the way they have coped with their brother’s death but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been affected.
‘Young children don’t expect to lose an older brother in this way. This has caused anxiety and sleepless nights for all of them.
‘And then there is me. I just can’t make sense of it. It’s not the natural order of things. You don’t expect to outlive any of your children.’
Ms Edwards continued: ‘Our family life has been changed forever. We celebrated Adam’s 21st birthday without him. How can that be right?
‘We will never experience the joy of watching him get married. Would he have had children? Our grandchildren – nieces and nephews to Adam’s brothers and sister.
‘All of that has been taken away from us by the driver of the car he was a passenger in.’
Price’s blood was taken three hours after the crash and found to show alcohol, cannabis and cocaine, below the legal limits.
But a back calculation showed he most likely had around 132mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood at the time of the crash. The legal limit is 80mg.
Geoffrey Lowe, prosecuting, said: ‘There was some suggestion the defendant might have been drinking until virtually the point of collision.’
Judge Stuart Driver, QC, told Price: ‘Your speed for part of this journey was averaged out at 86mph to 96mph in areas where the speed limits were 30mph and 40mph.’
The driver himself suffered a cardiac arrest in the horrific incident which happened at around 8.50pm.
His girlfriend was at the scene and ‘was witness to the fact that her partner died effectively’, Ian McMeekin, defending, said.
Price will feel ‘eternally regretful about the events of that night and the consequences for the family’, the court was told.
Mr McMeekin said: ‘He is going to have to live with that, but it’s small comfort I know to those who listen.’
Judge Driver told the defendant he had chosen ‘to drive very dangerously for no reason other than your own pleasure’ as he banned him from the road for nine and a half years.
Speaking after the case, Inspector Stuart McIver, of Merseyside Police Roads Policing Unit, said the crash was ‘caused by Price’s recklessness and disregard for the safety of himself and others in the car that night’
He added: ‘That a young man lost his life is the absolutely tragic but avoidable consequence of the decisions Price made in driving at high speed in a residential area.’
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