A motorist who knocked down a four-year-old boy and then drove off, leaving the youngster lying seriously injured on the road, was jailed for four months yesterday.
John Macdonald was also banned from driving for a year and fined £400 by Sheriff Gordon Fleetwood at Inverness Sheriff Court.
But the boy’s angry mother said the sentence was “not long enough”.
Medics say that her son – who required 36 stitches and needs a wheelchair to go any distance – will take about a year to fully recover from a limp caused by a broken leg.
She said: “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. They are basically sending out a message to other drivers that you can hit a kid and get off with it. It’s not much punishment for it. It’s no justice for my son.
“It’s not just physical, it’s mental as well. He has nightmares about it. I have to sleep with him most nights and if having a nightmare he grips onto the sheet and says, ‘I am falling.’”
“My other son saw it too and he has visions and dreams of his brother falling out of a window and dying. They’ve both seen a child psychologist because of it.”
Sheriff Fleetwood was told a pedestrian had tried to warn the driver about the four-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons. crossing the road.
The court heard that Macdonald, 34, had music blaring in his black Ford Focus.
Macdonald, of Glenurquhart Road, Inverness, had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of careless driving and failing to stop and provide his details after the collision in Springfield Gardens on July 18.
Fiscal Gary Aitken told the court that the youngster suffered chest, arm, hip and foot abrasions, a broken right femur, two pelvic fractures, a head wound and lost a couple of teeth.
He said the injuries were serious but not life-threatening.
But the boy’s mother added: “He’ll (Macdonald) be driving again in a year and in court they are saying it was not life threatening, but there were about 20 doctors around him that night and he was completely knocked out with the morphine. I never spoke to my boy for two days and did not know if he was going to be brain damaged.
“He’s got a permanent scar and has to keep his hair long because he is paranoid about it.”
Macdonald’s defence solicitor, Aileen Macinnes, told the court that her client “panicked and drove off, aware he had collided with a child,” adding: “He was remorseful at the time and remains so.
“He offers his apologies to the family and the child.”