THE mother of a teenager killed when he was knocked off his motorcycle said she felt she had been given a life sentence – as the car driver was handed a community order.
Clare Hart dropped to her knees in distress after seeing Sandra Matthews sentenced for causing the death of her son by careless driving at Derby Crown Court.
Liam Porter was killed almost instantaneously when the motorcycle he was riding collided with the side of Matthews' Vauxhall Corsa, after she pulled out of a junction near her home in Belper.
Mrs Hart, also of Belper, said: "Sitting in there was like reliving his death again. Liam had such a future. It's not just what I have lost, it's all he could have and would have been."
She said she had almost lost Liam when he was born three months prematurely.
She said: "We went through all that and then somebody else took him away from us."
Derby Crown Court heard that 55-year-old Matthews, who was sentenced to a 12-month community order, had shown great remorse.
Telling Matthews, of Ladywood Avenue, she must do 160 hours of unpaid work and would be banned from driving for two years, Judge John Burgess said: "You cannot listen to a case like this without feeling how unfair life is sometimes. There will probably be very few in this court who could not say 'that might have been me pulling out of that road'. It was a case of looking but not seeing."
MORE: Read the full tragic story here. WARNING: Police plea: Watch out for bikes