A woman driving at 104mph in a 40mph zone crashed into another car, leaving a mum and toddler seriously injured.
Leanne Webb, 36, has now been jailed for four years and four months over the collision.
It left Charlotte (Lotte) Whittle, 31, with brain damage she is still in hospital dealing with two years later, and her daughter Harper, who was 20 months, was also hurt though has now made a full recovery.
The crash, which happened in the Quinton area of Birmingham on May 8, 2019, ‘destroyed’ the family’s lives, Lotte’s father said.
Lotte had been travelling in a Kia Venga with Harper on Wolverhampton Road when she tried to turn right.
She she did so, a speeding Audi SQ5 hit her vehicle.
‘It has destroyed my daughter’s life and to a degree it has destroyed my life as well,’ her car salesman father Richard said.
‘I think, on balance, it was a fair sentence.
‘It was just lies after lies from her and the thing that hurt the most was when she said it was Lotte’s own “f***ing fault” for pulling out in front of her.’
Richard said his daughter was returning home after buying her daughter a Matalan swimsuit for a summer holiday at the time.
He added: ‘She is recovering but very slowly.
‘Physically she has recovered 100% but she struggles with speech and communication.
‘She is going to need care and assisted living for quite a long time, but she is still a lovely looking girl.
‘She doesn’t look any different to how she did before and is very fit, she just struggles with reading and writing.
‘She had a bleed on the brain so is having speech therapy to help her recover her communication.
‘Her lovely little girl is 100% recovered.’
Webb initially denied being at fault and even blamed Lotte for turning across her path.
Through the trial she admitted dangerous driving but claimed she’d been under duress.
Ian Windridge, prosecuting, said Webb’s Audi collided with the front near-side of the Kia at 1.48pm which propelled both vehicles 60 metres down the north-western carriageway.
A jury convicted her of two counts of causing injury by dangerous driving to Lotte and baby Harper in a two-day trial in May this year.
Desmond Lennon, defending Webb, said the speeding was of an ‘exceptional nature’ and was not something ‘she had done regularly’.
Judge Barry Berlin, said he rejected, as the jury did, her ‘crocodile tears’ as she pretended to show remorse for the victims early on in the case, but accepted she felt some remorse now.
Speaking after the sentencing, Richard added: ‘The main problem for us was that the woman put us through the trial because she didn’t admit she was driving too fast.
‘She came up with what the judge called a fictitious concoction when she was actually driving so fast.
‘She was going 104mph and my daughter was stationary.
‘That woman put us through this terrible ordeal because she wouldn’t admit it.
‘It is over now and we think we have justice.
‘All we can do is help my daughter repair and get back to how she was before.’
Lotte she was in a coma for over a month, was in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for seven months and then went to Moseley Hall Hospital for further treatment.
She was transferred into a care home for rehabilitation and is now being looked after at another hospital.
Her dad added: ‘It was heartbreaking – I never thought this could happen, I always thought these sorts of things happen to other people.
‘It seems Lotte has been punished by losing two years of her life and we hope with rehabilitation she will get some more speech back and have some sort of decent quality of life – she struggles to communicate and she’s unable to care for her daughter which is very hard.’
Webb was also disqualified from driving for six years and 10 months and she must pay a victim surcharge and take an extended driving test in future.
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