Why didn’t I put their seatbelts on?
Cry of drink-driving mum who killed her two children
A DRINK-DRIVING mother who killed two of her children in a horrific car crash was heard screaming afterwards: ‘God, why did I not put their seatbelts on?’
Mary McCann, 35, was driving on a motorway with three of her four children when her vehicle veered into another lane and smashed into a lorry.
Her four-year-old daughter Lilly was thrown on to the roadside, while her son Smaller, who had turned ten that day, was flung into the footwell. McCann had 98milligrams of alcohol in 100millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80mg.
She was speeding at a minimum of 72mph on the M1 near Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, where the limit was 60mph. McCann, who admitted two charges of causing death by careless driving, wept throughout the sentencing at Aylesbury Crown Court yesterday.
She appeared via videolink from Bronzefield jail in Surrey where she was remanded in custody after absconding following her children’s funerals in September.
Jailing her for 49 months and imposing a seven-year driving ban, Judge Francis Sheridan said: ‘It is a disgrace that you drove whilst drunk with your two children in the back of the car. You will carry the costs of what you did for the rest of your life.’
McCann had been at a birthday party when she crashed just after 11pm on August 9 last year on a northbound section of the motorway between junctions 14 and 15.
Prosecutor Stephen Shay said the Scania lorry was moving from lane one into lane two, while the defendant’s white Vauxhall Corsa in lane two ‘drifted’ into the inside lane ‘for no obvious reason’.
He added: ‘The defendant said, “God, why didn’t I put their seatbelts on?” Lilly would not have been ejected from the car if she had been restrained and she may have survived.
‘Smaller would have remained in his seat if he had been restrained. His fatal injury was likely to have been caused by his head striking the damaged part of the car.’ Both children were pronounced dead at the scene. Another daughter, then aged two, had her seatbelt on and survived. A third daughter, aged 13 at the time, was not in the car.
Irish-born McCann, who lives in Derby, was treated for shock.
Laban Leake, defending yesterday, said McCann had stopped taking psychotic medication for post-traumatic stress disorder ‘because she wishes to feel the blunt force of her grief’.
Her surviving children live with their grandmother.