Hit-and-run driver ruined our lives, say girl’s grieving parent

The parents of an aspiring dancer killed by a hit-and-run speeding learner driver have told how their lives fell apart after her death.

Alessia Boschiazzo, 14, was left in the road with fatal injuries after being hit by Steven Saunders’s car. She died in hospital a week later after her parents decided to switch off her life-support machine.

Alessia’s mother, Cecilia Flores, told Croydon crown court of her and her husband’s despair at being told that their daughter would never recover. “We spent an agonising six nights keeping a vigil by her bedside,” she said. “I do not believe there is anything worse than seeing your child die.”

The day before she was run down, Alessia, from Carshalton, had passed her audition to the Brit School — where singers Adele and Amy Winehouse trained — and her family received the acceptance letter after her death.

Ms Flores described Alessia as a “lovely and happy teenager full of targets and dreams in her life” who wanted to become a professional dancer.

“It is severely painful to know I will never see my daughter growing up, living her dreams as a dancer, going to her graduation, getting married, having children and generally living her life as she wanted to.

“I have never been able to be the same person. I have spent time in hospital due to severe depression and I have lost my job. Aldo, her father, is a broken man.”

Mr Boschiazzo was too distraught to attend court where Saunders, 22, of Eltham, denied dangerous driving until little over a week before his trial was due to begin. He admitted perverting the course of justice by setting fire to his car.

The court heard that the scaffolder hit Alessia in Morland Road, Croydon, as he rushed to a dinner date with his girlfriend in February last year. Driving on a provisional licence at 50mph in a 30mph zone, he was “darting and weaving in and out of traffic” before fatally injuring the teenager.

He then he drove off and torched his Renault Clio in a cul-de-sac half a mile from the scene of the crash.

He was jailed for six-and-a-half years on Thursday.