A WHEELCHAIR-BOUND pensioner was jailed yesterday after admitting that her drink-driving caused the deaths of a six-year-old girl and her grandmother.
Former alcoholic Susan Harty told the court that she wished she was dead following the horrific crash five days before Christmas, in 2000.
Marion Little, from Sleights, and her granddaughter Hannah Buck, from Whitby, both North Yorkshire, were killed instantly in the head-on crash after Harty's Vauxhall Corsa crossed the white line and hit the family's Nissan Micra as they returned home from school.
Two other grandchildren were injured. Two-year-old Harry Buck was thrown through the sunroof and suffered a broken arm, dislocated shoulder and facial scarring, while his one-year-old sister, Emma Leigh, broke both her legs while remaining strapped in her car seat.
Leeds Crown Court heard that the 62-year-old driver, who was on her way from her home near Huddersfield to her wood-carving shop at Whitby, was probably twice the drink-drive limit at the time of the crash.
Simon Healey, prosecuting, told the court that Harty gave a blood alcohol sample of 120 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood shortly after the crash, but calculations suggested she would have been up to 180 milligrams at the time of the impact.
The legal limit is 80 milligrams per 100 millilitres.
Paul Higgins, in mitigation, told the court: "She felt that the only reason she was kept alive after the accident was so that she can be punished."
Mr Higgins pleaded with the judge to suspend any prison sentence saying she had only a small chance of ever walking again following the crash and a prison term would dash that hope.
He told the court that "it is a complete mystery to her Harty as to how her blood contained such levels of intoxication".
Mr Higgins said Harty did not recall the accident but stressed her lapse of concentration was "momentary and inadvertent rather than being deliberate and prolonged".
At a previous hearing, Harty admitted two counts of causing death by driving without due care and attention, having consumed alcohol above the legal limit.
Judge Ian Dobkin said he had no choice but to jail Harty.
He sentenced her to 30 months in prison and disqualified her from driving for five years.
He said: "The result of that the crash is that a family is deprived of a six-year-old child and the child's grandmother."
He said the family "had had the misfortune of being on the same road as you, being in the condition you then were"
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