The mother of a boy who died after a woman crashed into him while counting £10 notes has shared her unending grief.
Chantelle Gleave, 22, was driving at 60mph with broken headlights when she ploughed into 17-year-old Ethan Ross on the A55 eastbound near St Asaph on September 12 last year.
Gleave looked up too late after counting notes of money and hit Ethan off his moped.
Ethan Ross, 17, suffered fatal injuries and his Mum told Mold Crown Court on Thursday: "Our son died for £100."
Mrs Ross said Ethan had put on his hard hat and as he left home to ride on his moped to his shift as a waiter at Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel said: "Bye Mum."
She replied: "Bye Eth. Have a good shift. See you later. Love you."
She said: "Ethan shouted back 'love you' and went out the door."
The court heard Ethan had always taken safety seriously and wore gloves and a safety coat. He even carried a £5 note for emergencies. Police later returned it to his mum and dad. But by 10.30pm, he still wasn't home, North Wales Live reports.
Later, Helen found out that by 9.58pm that night "my perfect, amazing boy was lying on the side of the road without his mum, as his life was slipping away”.
Mrs Ross told the hushed courtroom: "At 11pm came a knock on the door. That was the beginning of our nightmare.
"They (the police) said 'Are you Mrs Ross, Ethan's mother? Your son has been involved in an accident. He's been taken to Ysbyty Glan Clwyd. It's very serious. You need to go there now'."
Helen went upstairs and told her husband Paul. They broke the news to family and friends, including Ethan's older brother Callum, 24, who lives across the road.
She said: "I was shaking and uncontrollable. I had a strange sick feeling."
Ethan was transferred by helicopter to the Royal Stoke University Hospital. Mrs Ross said they went to the front entrance but were directed around the back where a nurse met them.
She told the court: "He was so still. There were machines and wires everywhere. I said 'No, that's not my boy.' "
Ethan was then moved to a critical care ward while his parents were shown into a family room.
"I wanted to hold him and squeeze the life back into his body,” Mrs Ross added.
"I told him how much I loved and adored him.”
Two days after the incident, on Monday, September 14, Mr and Mrs Ross were told that if two independent neurologists could detect no change in Ethan's condition they would have to "declare him brain dead". He was declared deceased later that day.
She told the court: "Telling Callum it was time to say goodbye to his brother was the hardest thing I've done.”
Later, Mrs Ross lay on the bed with Ethan and sang his favourite song Ain't No Mountain High Enough "at the top of my voice" and "still hoping for a change" in his condition.
"But no. He had gone.”
She told Mold Crown Court that the family gave their consent for Ethan's organs to be donated to others. Recipients included a teenage boy and a woman in her sixties who both received a kidney.
Ethan's parents went home "in a daze, wondering what had happened to us in the last four days."
Mrs Ross turned to the circumstances of her son's death, with Gleave being jailed for five years for dangerous driving. The court had also heard she had been counting money just before the crash.
"Our son died through a total lack of negligence and over £100."
She said she didn't want to remember her son as forever young but to celebrate his 18th birthday, going to Bristol University and having children.
The family arranged a marathon among other events in his memory.
She added: "We are incredibly proud of him as we always were. I hope we have made Ethan proud too.
"I so want him to be remembered for the right reasons and not for how his life ended."
Gleave, of Larch Avenue, Shotton, appeared in Mold Crown Court for sentencing on Thursday, December 9, having previously pleaded guilty to causing the death of 17-year-old Ethan Ross.
During sentencing, the court heard that Gleave is pregnant, with the baby, due in April 2022.
Judge Rowlands sentenced Gleave to five years in prison and disqualified her from driving for seven-and-a-half years.
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