THIS little boy will never properly know the man his father was before he suffered devastating injuries in an horrific car crash.

Glen Carter, 32, was left severely brain-damaged after the crash in York last July, when a car driven by Daniel Baker left the road and smashed into a tree.

Glen's close friend Steve Dowson, 23, was killed and another friend James Martin was left a quadriplegic.

Baker, 23, was last week jailed for seven years.

But for five-year-old Toby, a game of football in the park, a conversation and even a proper cuddle with his dad, will only ever be a dream.

Toby's mum, Sara Cooke, said a seven-year jail sentence would not change the fact that a little boy had lost his daddy.

"To me, he (Baker) has taken three lives," she said. "He should have been given three life sentences. What's seven years? People get longer for burglary."

Sara said Glen will be in hospital for the rest of his life. He cannot walk, talk, or do anything for himself other move his left hand and shake his head from side to side. He is fed through a tube in his stomach.

"Toby idolised Glen," she said. "Well, they idolised each other.

"Toby says that when his daddy comes home we're going to have a party. That will never happen, he'll never be well enough to come home, but how can I tell him that? How do you explain that to a five-year-old boy who's just waiting for his daddy to come home?

"Toby phones him all the time and the nurses hold the phone to his ear and tell us that he's smiling." Although they split up two years before the crash, they remained close and Sara regularly drove a to visit him when he was in hospital in Yarmouth.

She plans to see him in Northampton, where he moved to earlier this month.

Sara said Glen still recognises his family.

"In a way that is the cruellest thing," she said.

"His relationship with Toby has been destroyed and no seven-year jail sentence is ever going to change that."

Updated: 10:31 Friday, June 25, 2004