Car meets ‘scourge of the Earth’, grieving father says after killer sentenced

The 13-and-a-half-year jail sentence for a dangerous driver who ploughed into a group of friends – killing two teenagers and leaving two others seriously injured – should be a warning to anyone thinking of taking part in such events, a grieving father has said.

Damian Corfield’s son Ben was 19 when Dhiya Al Maamoury, 56, lost control of his Nissan Skyline and crashed into him, killing him and friend Liberty Charris, 16, and injuring Ethan Kilburn and Ebonie Parkes on November 20, 2022.

After Al Maamoury was jailed at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday, Mr Corfield, a Dudley borough councillor, said street racing and car meets were a “scourge of the Earth” and hoped the sentence would be a lesson to those who take part in them.

Speaking beside wife Lynette, and with a pin badge of his son’s face attached to his suit lapel, he said: “We’ve all seen these type of car meets advertised out there. They are a danger to all road users and they seem to have progressed over the last 12 or 18 months.

“The incident that took Ben’s life at Oldbury, there is an injunction there now and West Midlands Police are certainly making a strong stance on that to stamp this practice out.

“You should be able to, as a pedestrian, be awarded that safety and we applaud the work that West Midlands Police are doing.”

While Mr Corfield said the sentencing “hasn’t delivered a conclusion for us as a family”, he said he believed the judge had set a precedent with his sentence.

He said: “Ben’s gone, we’ve lost our son, the light of our lives. Nothing will take that pain away, and it’s the most excruciating, heart-wrenching pain, every second of the day.

“(The sentence) was far more than what us four families were expecting, and this has got to be a warning to anybody that’s involved in this type of action, that it won’t be tolerated.

“This guy showed no remorse so we are certainly happy with the sentence today, but even if it was life, it couldn’t make us feel any better, but we do appreciate the sentence today and everybody that has been involved in it.”

Speaking of his son, Mr Corfield said he was a “miracle” who completed their family.

He said: “(Al Maamoury) has taken our lives away. The pain and devastation as a father, a mother and a sister, we cant settle. We wake up and we’re calling for him.

“Al Maamoury has been given his sentence but we’ve got a life sentence and we have to deal with that now for whatever time we have left.”