A drunk teenager who accidentally reversed into his mother and killed her as she begged him not to drink-drive was today jailed for one year.
Learner driver Lewis Foster, 19, arrived home drunk after a row with work colleagues and got behind the wheel of his car despite having no licence or insurance.
Landscape gardener Foster’s mother Deborah Jones, 47, followed him to the Citroen Saxo she had bought him and begged him not to drive because it would ‘ruin everything’ if he got caught.
But as he revved the engine, the car suddenly jerked backwards – hitting his mother and crushing her against a fence post, a court heard.
She was killed by the horrific accident on July 12 last year, and devastated Lewis was found to be twice the legal drink drive limit.
He admitted causing death by driving carelessly under the influence of alcohol and driving without insurance at a previous hearing.
Foster, of St Austell, Cornwall, was yesterday jailed for a year in a young offenders’ institute as Truro Crown Court heard he faced a ‘lifetime of mental torture’.
Judge David Ticehurst told him: ‘The words tragic and tragedy are often misused these days but there is no escape of the fact that this is a tragic case with a tragic result for everyone involved.
