38 year-old Darryl Anderson was tossed in jail for a term upwards of seventeen years for running down 30 year old Karlene Warner and her eight month-old baby nephew Zackary Blades while he was legally intoxicated. The family of the believe his his driving privileges should be permanently revoked as well.
The two victims met their end in Durham County on the A1 motorway, when Anderson—a resident of Rotherham—struck them while attempting to take a selfie as he barreled down the road at a speed somewhere north of 140 miles per hour.
Zackary’s mother and Ms. Warner’s sister Shalorna, who was driving the car that Anderson plowed into, has vowed to spend “every day” of her life fighting for justice, as a way of honoring their memory.
Anderson has almost three times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream as he drove his Audi Q5 in the wee hours of May the 31st along the route from Newcastle Airport to Thorpe Hesley, where he makes his home.
Sharlona Warner was likewise heading home from the airport where she had picked up her sister, who had returned early from a vacation to start a job as a flight attendant—something she’d been dreaming about for quite some time.. Her sleeping son was in his car seat in the vehicle.
At 3:17 in the morning, forty minutes after he departed the airport, Anderson’s Audi collided with Warner’s Peugeot about four miles south of the town of Chester-le-Street. Young Zackary, who was in the back seat, was killed instantly, as was Karlene Warner, who was sitting in the front passenger seat.
As he stood before Durham Crown Court to receive sentence on Tuesday, July 08, Anderson was told by Judge Joanne Kidd that the way he was driving made the crash “inevitable.” Anderson had previously convicted of drunk driving, and had received a warning from the Sheffield police about his reckless behavior behind the wheel only a week before the fatal collision.
