A MUM whose 11-year-old son was killed when a scaffolding sheet fell off a lorry says she can never forgive the driver.
Harry Dennis was travelling in a car with his dad Lee, 51, and older sister when the unsecured scaffolding sheet smashed through the windshield.
The schoolboy was rushed to hospital after the incident on the B2095 in Hooe, East Sussex, on December 15, 2022 but later died.
Driver Russell Le Beau, 34, was jailed for four years in November after admitting causing death by dangerous driving.
Harry’s mum Maria Dennis, 38, said: “There’s part of me that thinks he’s a normal guy that went to work that day.
“He didn’t set out to do that, he didn’t. So that’s a part of me,
“The bit that makes me really cross and that I can’t accept and can never forgive is that it could have easily not happened.
“He didn’t do what he should have done and it meant that we lost Harry.
“I get that he didn’t set out to do it, but his actions caused Harry to not live the rest of his life like he should have done.
“That’s what I say, I can’t accept, and I can’t live with that.
“And even if he got 100 years in prison, that still would not have made me feel any better.”
Maria described the day of the accident, when her husband and kids were going to a hospital appointment.
The kids were homeschooling because the school’s heating system had failed.
She said: “They said there’s been an accident, Harry’s been in an accident, and the air ambulance had been called.
“At that moment, that’s all I knew. And they were saying it’s okay.
“And I was thinking, it’s not okay, because you don’t get air ambulances if it’s not serious.
“I remember breaking down at that moment, it was like from that minute life went into slow-mo, but my brain switched off.
“I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know where I was. It was like being in a dream. I was just numb and dazed.
“It was just a normal day. I left and I would have got home from work, and taken Harry to football training and then got him home and started doing dinner.
“Just all the normal stuff. The World Cup was on at the time, so there’d have probably been football on the TV.”
“When it first happened it was a week, 10 days before Christmas. So that was all a bit crazy.
“Then, obviously, with the funeral and sorting all that sort of stuff out our brains couldn’t cope with anything else.
“Then we were trying to find our feet, how we going to get through this.”
Maria, 38, also spoke about the trauma of having to go back to work in a hospital.
She would have panic attacks just seeing empty beds or hearing monitors beeping.
The mum would also find herself in floods of tears whenever driving near Harry’s school, which is just down the road, when pupils were coming out.
She often pulls over her car if she finds herself behind or van or HGV.
Maria said: “I used to freak out about the hospital beds, that was a massive trigger.
“I couldn’t walk down the corridor. I used to have to walk down the corridor with my manager, linking arms, looking the other way.
“As soon as I saw a hospital bed it absolutely threw me into meltdown.
“I thought right, I work in a hospital, so I need to be able to deal with this, so every time I went into work I made myself walk down the corridor.”
Maria said it took six weeks or so before she could actually walk, even just by an empty hospital bed.
She added: “But I knew I had to do it because I enjoyed my job, and I wanted to go back.
“I thought, I’ve had my son taken away from me I’m not having my job taken away as well.
“The triggers like the beeping, all the beeps we’d have had in hospital when Harry was there from all the machines.”
I have to retrain my brain to hear those noises and see these things without it going into meltdown.”
Maria Dennis, 38
She continued: “Some of the noises at work I’ve really had to work with now. It’s only like one of the alarms or something going off.
“I know it’s alright and it’s not any bother, but I have to retrain my brain to hear those noises and see these things without it going into meltdown.
“The same as when I used to drive past. Both Harry’s primary school and secondary schools are within a stone’s throw from our house.
“So of course, after it happened, if I was driving along the road at 8am or 9am or 3pm, there’d be a sea of school kids.
“That used to be a massive trigger, and I couldn’t do it. And it got to a point I thought, I can’t let that dictate my life.
“I’ll be driving up the road in floods of tears and trying to calm myself down.
“I know I need to do it, and eventually… don’t get me wrong, sometimes it still catches me and I can get tearful.
“But nine times out of 10 I can do it and I can focus and get by and it keeps me going. It’s hard, really hard, but it keeps me ticking over.”
