A 16-year-old car thief whose latest joyride ended with the death of a young boy has been sentenced to three years' detention and given a seven-year driving ban.
That means it will be 2013 before Ashley Lindo can drive legally, and it'll take several more years of spotless living if he's ever going to get a cheap car insurance quote.
Speaking in his defence at Teesside Crown Court, Jamie Hill told how Lindo had found a £400 Rover Metro apparently abandoned in bushes, on May 16.
The temptation to steal it proved too great, and soon Lindo was joyriding through a Middlesbrough public park with two older passengers - 19-year-old Lee Fenton and Jason Wheatley, 18.
The court heard that Lindo was driving dangerously quickly and doing handbrake turns to impress them.
Daniel Conroy Curtin was out playing with friends when he found the Metro bearing down on him at about 30mph. Lindo clipped him with the car's wing mirror, and the force of the impact was enough to throw the eight-year-old 6ft into the air.
Instead of stopping to help, Lindo, Fenton and Wheatley abandoned the car and ran off, leaving shocked passers-by to call for an ambulance.
Curtin, who sustained fatal brain injuries in the crash, died nine days later in hospital.
On his remand in custody, Lindo - who already has an Asbo and two supervision orders for previous joyriding offences to his name - sounded remarkably buoyant.
"It's mint in here," he said, "It's only a charge of dangerous driving, that's not too bad, is it? There's a lad in here doing just two years for it."
Teenagers are normally elligable for driving lessons and young driver car insurance at age 17, but Lindo must wait until he is 23. Even then, he must pass a specially extended driving test before the authorities consider him fit to drive and hold motor insurance.
Regarding Lindo's sentence, Judge Fox, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, said "Your real punishment you will feel when you are older, when you have realised the seriousness of what you did.
"You are too young to appreciate fully that you have deprived a child of his life and a family of one who was dearly loved."
But Daniel's mother, Clare Conroy, feels the three-year detention is too lenient. "I am heartbroken and left feeling empty," she said.
"The sentence is not enough," she added. "It should have been more - but that's the law for you."