A heartbroken mother recalls a hug she’ll “never forget” after picking up the body of her dead baby from the side of a highway.
The child had been flung over 150 feet from the car due to a drunk driver crashing into their vehicle at 141 mph, BBC reported.
Shalorna Warner describes herself as a “broken, childless mother” after losing her son Zackary Blades and her sister, Karlene Warner, in the tragic accident. The 8-month-old baby was found by another driver who let out a “painful scream” upon spotting the child’s lifeless body on the pavement.
Warner recounts the devastating moment she found her son, instantly knowing he was dead. “I had to pick my dead baby up from the side of the road,” she shared during her victim impact statement at the sentencing of Darryl Anderson, the drunk driver responsible for the crash, per The Independent. Anderson received a 17-year and three-month prison sentence for two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
“I heard a painful scream from the lorry driver crying: ‘Oh no, he’s here — your baby’s here,’” Warner recounted. “I jumped over to find my baby lying on the edge of the grass of the motorway. I hugged him so tight, a hug I will never forget. No words will surmount the irreparable hole that has been left in my heart and in my life.”
“Zackary was my rainbow baby — he was the light at the end of a tunnel of a very dark time for me and brought joy, happiness, and laughter into my life. My baby’s future, my future, our life together, has been stolen from me. I won’t ever see him look up and smile at me again. I won’t have that luxury,” she said.
Warner expressed her ongoing anguish, saying, “Every second of every day I relive that night over and over again in my head, thinking what did my innocent little boy do to deserve this? And for my sister, Karlene, I just have no words. I am so sorry this happened to you. It’s hard to process something that doesn’t seem real — it just feels like I am living a nightmare.”
“I will feel the ripples of this pain for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I will be able to get through this — I am scarred, I am traumatized, I am petrified to live my life,” she stated. “The impact of these events will amplify the hard times and taint any good moment I may possibly have, because within my heart lives Zackary and Karlene, and I will never live a normal life again without them.”
Addressing Judge Joanne Kidd, Warner pleaded for a harsher sentence for Anderson. “Your Honour, I stand before you today a broken shell of a woman and a childless mother. But this guilt is not mine to bear — this guilt is owed to the person that caused this infinite agony,” Warner said.
“I hope the pain of this weighs them down for all eternity. Nothing will bring my son and my sister back to me. The only way forward for myself is if the defendant faces the same sentence I am facing — life,” she concluded. “The irony of it all is that I will never see my loved ones again, but he will.”
This heart-wrenching story serves as a stark reminder of the devastating consequences of drunk driving, and the dangers drunk drivers pose to others on the road.
