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'I was screaming "Zack, Zack", lifting random bits of metal': A 141mph drunk driver killed her 'rainbow baby'. Now, Shalorna relives that terrible crash... and the awful moment she found her child's body
The image has not been released to the public because the family find it too distressing, but Shalorna Warner will never be able to erase it from her mind.
'It haunts me,' she says of the picture which was snapped on a mobile phone three seconds before the person taking it became a killer and ripped her family apart.
'The police asked if we wanted to see it, and I did. Some of the family didn't. But I had to, to try to understand.'
The photograph, described as 'chilling' by the judge who jailed him this week, was taken by Darryl Anderson in the early hours of May 31 this year. He was at the wheel of his Audi Q5, doing 141 miles per hour, and three times over the drink drive limit.
The image also captured a light illuminated on the dashboard. Shalorna had to ask what it was.
Such was the force of the impact, eight-month-old Zackary Blades ended up 160ft away on the other side of the A1
The family's vehicle was sent spinning across the opposite carriageway after being hit by speeding drunk driver Darryl Anderson
'It was the collision warning light,' she says. 'Some newer cars have them. They flash when a collision is imminent.'
Also clear in the image is Shalorna's car, just up ahead.
At that moment, now frozen in time, she was driving, 'probably laughing' with her sister Karlene, who was in the passenger seat. Shalorna had just picked her up from Newcastle airport. Her suitcase was in the boot.
In the back of the car, snug in his baby seat ('We got the Isofix one, the safest you can get') was Shalorna's eight-month-old son Zackary.
His mother, who tells me she had never even been in a car accident before, not even a little bump, hopes he remained asleep in the unthinkable moments that followed.
They never stood a chance. Anderson's car ploughed into them, sending their Peugeot 308 spinning across the opposite carriageway.
Karlene never left her seat, and suffered appalling internal injuries.
Baby Zack's baby seat, still attached to the rear seat of the car, was ripped from the vehicle. Such was the force of the impact, little Zack himself, who'd been carefully strapped in, was hurled from it and ended up 160ft away, on the other side of the A1.
There was a truly desperate hunt as Shalorna — miraculously not seriously injured — ran up and down the road trying to find her baby among the debris. 'It must have been only for minutes, but it felt like hours,' she says.
She recalls a surreal moment, in the midst of all the horror and the carnage, when she stopped for a moment, and closed her eyes and opened them again. 'I thought if I closed my eyes, I would wake up from the nightmare I was obviously having.'
Then, after calling 999, and not knowing what else to do, she phoned her dad. 'I always phone my dad. If my car needs something for its MOT, I call Dad. If I run out of lightbulbs, I call my dad.'
Her mum answered. 'She couldn't make sense of what I was saying but she knew that if I was calling at that time, it was bad. I remember saying, screaming "They are gone, they are gone. I can't find Zack." I was saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry".'
Shalorna's sister Karlene, 30, who worked as cabin crew with Tui, suffered appalling internal injuries in the crash
This was how her parents learned that they had lost a child and a grandchild.
Little wonder that at Durham Crown Court this week, where Darryl Anderson was jailed for 17 years for causing death by dangerous driving, members of the family challenged him to look them in the face.
'He would not,' says Shalorna. 'The man does not seem to be human. His first words after all this were, "I have a business". Who thinks of that first? He also has a daughter, but he didn't say that.'
How to adequately convey the devastation that can be unleashed by one selfish and irresponsible maniac?
On Tuesday, the court heard Anderson, 38, had ten previous convictions for 12 offences, including drink driving.
An empty bottle of vodka was found in the debris after the collision, and such were the levels of alcohol in his system that Judge Joanne Kidd told him: 'You played Russian roulette with the lives of every man, woman and child you passed on that journey.'
This is Shalorna's first interview since that terrible day, although it's taking place not at the home she and her partner Jack shared with baby Zack.
They have not been able to face returning to that house, so Jack's employers have arranged temporary accommodation.
'I can't walk back in there because every room will be full of Zack. His ball pit in the living room, his bath seat in the bathroom.'
A copy of the order of service from baby Zack and his Auntie Karlene's funeral sits on the sideboard as Shalorna speaks. There, too, are Zack's ashes in the smallest-size urn you can get.
Anderson, 38, who was jailed this week, was doing 141 miles per hour and was three times over the drink-drive limit
He had ten previous convictions for 12 offences, including drunk driving. He is pictured failing a breathalyser test after the crash
The family decided that, in the circumstances, a joint funeral was fitting. Shalorna thinks her older sister — 30 to her 26 — would have understood that in the moments after the impact, when the car (or what was left of it) had stopped spinning and Karlene was not responding to her desperate screams, Shalorna had to leave her to go and search for her baby.
'Karlene was a mam too,' she says. 'She had a little girl, who is now three. She would have done the same if it was her daughter who had been in the car. But I do feel guilty. I couldn't be with both of them.'
That very same conflict Shalorna felt that night 'when my whole world was ripped from me' is replicated today, as she struggles to navigate mourning for her son and her sister simultaneously.
'How do you grieve twice?' she asks. 'It's Zack I think of every minute, but I think I just haven't begun to grieve for Karlene yet. I miss her so much. We told each other everything. She's the one I would have been able to phone and say "I can't do this", but she's not here.'
Yet there is comfort that they died together.
'It means Zack's not alone. I don't think I would be here if I thought he was alone. My sister was the best mam, and I know she will take care of him.'
Zack was her 'rainbow baby' - a term used to describe a baby born after parents have suffered a loss. 'I'd always wanted to be a mam,' she explains, as she charts his little life.
'But we lost a baby in 2022. At the scan there was no heartbeat. We spent a year trying to get pregnant, which was really hard, and then in January 2023, I fell pregnant with Zack but worried all the way through. When he arrived, I couldn't stop crying at how perfect he was.'
Zack was born into a huge and loving family. There were three sisters. Karlene, Lareesa, 28 and Shalorna was the youngest. Their parents now live in France (although have spent much of their time since the crash in the UK, offering support).
All the sisters were living their dreams. Lareesa worked as cabin crew, and Karlene ('bubbly, heart of gold, the best big sister you could want') had just landed a similar job with Tui.
Karlene had been on holiday, but had to fly home early because she was on standby to work. With so many members of the family out of the country, she'd asked Shalorna if she could pick her up at the airport, apologising for the fact the flight landed in the early hours.
Shalorna agreed. Her nights were disjointed anyway because Zack was still waking every three hours for a feed. Also, Jack was away in Scotland for work, 'so Zack was always going to come with me'.
She remembers dressing him extra warm for the trip. 'I put a blue baby suit that my mam had bought on him because it was cosy and had a fluffy lining.' She clipped him into the seat, as meticulous as ever.
Although the flight was due in at 1.30am it was over an hour later by the time Karlene cleared passport control. In that time little Zack woke for a feed. Sharlorna, parked up outside the airport, gave him what would be his final bottle, then had 'a little cuddle'.
Karlene, pictured with Zack, had been on holiday and asked Shalorna if she could pick her up at Newcastle airport
Despite the hour, there were shrieks of delight as Karlene finally leapt into the car, leaning round to gasp at how big Zack was getting, full of tales from her holiday.
Roadworks meant a route change so Karlene brought up the sat nav on her phone as Shalorna took a longer route home, through Newcastle city centre and out along the A1.
Unbeknownst to them, Anderson, fresh from his own holiday in Turkey, was making the same journey. He had rowed with his wife, who had flown home early.
He joked with staff at the airport that he was heading off to Bradford to find another wife. He had clearly been drinking, although no-one knew how much.
There was barely any traffic on that road. No reason to suspect what was to come.
The first thing Shalorna remembers was a massive bang, then 'a sensation I can't even put into words' as the car spun, crossed into the opposite carriageway and crashed into a wall. The left hand passenger door flew off, as did other parts of the car. Shalorna was aware of none of it.
'I wasn't sure if the car had flipped, spun. I didn't know where we were, what was happening. And I was fighting with something, a curtain, a deflated balloon. I didn't know what, but it was the airbags. I'd never experienced airbags going off before.'
Bloodied and cut by flying glass herself ('I have no idea how Karlene had the injuries she had, when I didn't even have a broken leg or arm'), she looked to her left, to see her sister, lifeless.
'I was shouting "Karlene!", waiting for her to answer me but nothing came. Then I thought "Zack".'
She tells me that in the movies drivers of crashed cars have to struggle to get out of a vehicle, but 'my door just opened'. She told her sister, 'I will come back for you', then staggered out and around her car. And she could not believe what she was seeing.
'Part of the back seat just wasn't there. Bits of the car were everywhere, all over the road. And there was no sign of Zack. I was screaming '"Zack, Zack", lifting random bits of metal. It just didn't feel real. I kept thinking, "I will wake up, please let me wake up".'
She remembers Karlene's suitcase being intact, bizarrely, and hauling it out of the way to see if Zack was behind it.
'I ran up and down that road. I listened. I don't know. I thought I might hear him.'
At one point she spied Anderson himself. 'I didn't know if he was the other driver, or just someone who had stopped. I said, "Help. I can't find my baby".'
Anderson simply stood there. 'He did not help.'
Due to roadworks Shalorna took a longer route home, through Newcastle city centre and out along the A1
Among the debris , she spotted the baby seat, mangled and barely recognisable, and still attached to the car seat. And Zack was not in it.
'Afterwards, the police spent four hours with me going over it, and I still don't understand how he came out. But they just said that in a collision at that speed, with that impact...'
It was a lorry driver, who had stopped on the other carriage way, who was the first to spot baby Zack.
'The lorry driver cried out. It was an awful cry. I knew. I ran over and there was my baby, lying by the side, on his back, as if he was sleeping. His little legs had come out of the sleepsuit. The buttons must have been off with the impact, but there was very little blood and just a cut on his head.
'I picked him up, I just had to. I will never forget that hug, and the thing is, he still looked perfect.'
Hardened police officers have never quite recovered from the scenes they were greeted with that night. What is utterly extraordinary is that Shalorna talks about how sorry she felt for them.
'I know they are trained, but those police officers, the paramedics, that doctor who stopped. They should never have had to see those things, and they were amazing.
'Afterwards, when we were just spending time with Zack at the hospital and then the funeral home, we realised his little comforter, which we used to attach to his dummy, was still missing. I begged the police to find it, and they did, at the scene. That meant a lot. We still sleep with it every night.'
Contrast that evidence of humanity with the exact opposite displayed by Anderson, who concocted a ridiculous story about how he wasn't even driving; a hitch-hiker he had picked up was.
'Anyone normal would have been heartbroken if they had killed a baby. He still only thought of himself.'
Then came the funeral. Shalorna picked Zack's little outfit – a Babygro his nan had given him, with pandas on. She wanted to be the one to 'tuck him in nice' for the final time. 'I put his bobble blanket around him, and arranged his teddies'.
She and Jack carried the tiny coffin, which followed Karlene's coffin during the funeral procession. 'It felt like I was carrying the world, even thought it can't have been that heavy,' she recalls.
Shalorna, right, is determined to speak out to press for change around drink driving laws. She hopes people will sign a petition which she can then take to Downing Street
Hers is the true life sentence. The saddest thing she says to me is that her dream was always to be a mum, and now 'it has been taken from me, twice'.
People have said she is still young; there can be other children. She shakes her head.
'I don't know if I can go through that again, knowing that you can lose it all, but at the same time my mam says, "Do not let him take your dreams from you, too".'
There is a remarkable strength there, though, underneath the pain. Despite being still raw from grief, she is determined to speak out today, to press for changes to drink driving laws.
First, she was horrified to discover that, as things stand, Anderson will be able to get behind the wheel of a car again one day.
'He received a 21-and-a-half year ban, but we feel that should be a lifetime ban. He had been disqualified before. This WAS his second chance, and he killed two people.
'On what planet does he deserve a third chance? If someone has a gun licence and shoots people dead, they will never get another one. He used that car as a weapon so the same should apply.'
Then there is the length of that sentence. 'The maximum that he could have had was 25 years inside, but because he pleaded guilty — eventually — there was an automatic reduction. I have trouble with that.
'My mam likens it to having a Tesco Clubcard, so getting a reduction on the price. But even with the 17 years, he will only serve a portion. With good behaviour he could be out in nine years.'
She looks at a photo of Zack and notes that he would not even have started secondary school by that time.
It's hard to think of anyone more qualified to challenge the drink driving laws, and make sure men like Anderson can never get behind the wheel again.
She hopes people will sign a petition which she can then take to Downing Street.
'It won't bring Zack or Karlene back, but it might stop this happening to another family,' she says.
'Because this was preventable. They did not need to die.'
Sign Shalorna's petition at https://www.change.org/p/implement-mandatory-lifelong-driving-bans-for-deaths-caused-by-dangerous-driving