A MAN whose car careered across a road and killed a toddler in a pram after being parked without the hand-brake up has walked free from court.
Judge Piers Grant told 32-year-old Darren Conway, pictured, he was suspending his six-month jail term because he had pleaded guilty, had expressed genuine remorse and his culpability in not fully engaging the handbrake was low. As the mother and foster parents of little Rham Gavriel alvarez listened a few feet away in the public gallery at newtownards Crown Court, the judge said it was clear from their "moving, courageous and dignified" victim impact statements that their loss was "enormous".
"Their grief at the loss of a little boy who was effectively a son to both families will remain acute for a very long time, if not for the rest of their lives," he said.
Half-way through the first day of his trial last month, shop fitter Conway - from Rutherglen Gardens in Bangor - pleaded guilty to causing Rham's death by careless driving on the Comber Road in Dundonald on December 29 2012.
Judge Grant recounted how Rham's mother Imelda was pushing his buggy on a "blustery" afternoon when Conway's Volkswagen Golf "careered" into them, wedging the pram and her between against a fence.
The car had silently rolled backwards from the Limetree Residential Home and across the busy Comber Road, narrowly missing traffic but ploughing into the buggy, and causing "catastrophic" injuries to the little boy.
Rham was just two years and five months old and his death followed that of his sister Lindsay a year before his birth.
Conway had been at the nursing home visiting his grandfather when he parked his car, smoked a cigarette and then went inside, knowing nothing of what happened until he "heard a commotion" outside, and telling a witness at the scene that he must have forgotten to put the hand-brake on.
The Golf was examined by a forensic engineer who found that of the 13 possible notches of tension, Conway had lifted the handbrake just two clicks.
Judge Grant said his actions were careless in that he failed to carry out any of the three Highway Code instructions for parking on an incline - fully engage the handbrake, leave the vehicle in gear and to turn the wheels so that if the car does roll, it rolls into the kerbside. As the car rolled silently backwards, Rham's mother "had no warning and no opportunity to save him", he said.
Conway was also banned from driving for three years. Afterwards none of Rham's relatives wished to comment and neither did Conway, who ran away from reporters.