Mum heard 'last gurgling breaths' of car-loving son as life support turned off

• Rajiv Popat speaks to Dr Steph Alger about the loss of her son Justin, and her thoughts on newly qualified drivers being prevented from taking other young people as passengers

A grieving mum has recalled the moment her son's life support machine was turned off, after he was involved in a car crash late at night, on the way home from a car meet.

Dr Steph Alger's son Etienne, known as Justin, was 18 when he lost control of his car. He was driving at 66mph, which was only a little over the legal limit, but the road was wet, he took a corner too quickly, and he had a nail in his tyre.

The car went over a ravine and landed on its roof onto a wall, with Justin's head hitting it.

Dr Alger recalls the knock at the door from one of Justin's friends, who, white faced, told her there had been an accident.

"We had a knock on the door at around midnight, it sounds strange but I knew something bad had happened, part of me knew that my son had died."

She rushed to the scene along the A6 near Dove Holes in the High Peak, a notoriously bendy stretch of road.

Justin was on a stretcher and gasping for his last breaths. He was taken to hospital where it was found he had a catastrophic brain injury which he would not survive.

After taking him off life support, his family stayed with him over the next two hours.

"Watching my son slip away slowly, hearing his raspy breath fade away, it was the longest two hours of my entire life. I knew what was going to happen, but I just tried to make the most of every moment of time we had with him. But he was gone."It sounds really morbid that you want to hear the last gurgling breaths of your child, but it’s like you want to take ownership, you want to own every last minute of them.

"I tried to bathe my son and attempted to get the grit out of his hands and of his face. But, he smelt like he was dying. There is an overwhelming sort of acidic smell to death that I recognised as a sign that he was gone."

Dr Alger's life stopped from that moment.

“That was the moment that our lives really changed for good. I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t dress myself and to be honest, I just wanted to die. That lasted for two years, and I got to the point where I really started to beat myself up."I have another child to look after, but you cut yourself off emotionally from everybody. I cut myself off from my son, from my husband; I spent the rest of my waking hours thinking about what the best way to join Justin would be."

Steph is now using her grief to educate others about the need to drive carefully and consider the conditions of the road, working with Derbyshire Police.

She says that speed limits are there for a reason, they’re not a target speed to maintain at every corner.

“I don’t like to describe him as a boy racer as it makes him sound less of a victim, but he liked his car.

“Speeding is not worth it; you’ve got dreams and you’ve got aspirations."

Justin was a media student at Buxton College with aspirations of studying law at university.

“Justin has lost his aspirations, his dreams, he’s lost the opportunity to have children and a wife, a good job.”

Police Constable Cork, a member of Derbyshire Police's Roads Policing Unit, says: "The vast majority of the people I speak to on a daily basis aren't your typical 'criminals' that we would normally deal with.

"We don't often deal with shoplifters or career criminals, in our job we are often dealing with people who have never been in trouble with the police, who maybe have never once dealt with police before. Somebody could be on the way to the airport - or returning from it - and have been involved in a collision and they have lost their life as a result.

"Nobody on the morning of a collision left the house thinking, 'I'll never come back'. That is difficult to deal with from our side of things, from my own experience it's awful to deal with, but I cannot imagine the untold misery that it causes for families and friends of those involved."

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