‘Ben completed our family’, father says about son killed by dangerous driver

A grieving father has said “the very instance of what we live for has gone” after a dangerous driver was sentenced to 13-and-a-half-years for killing two teenagers and leaving two others seriously injured.
Damian Corfield said car meets are a “scourge of the earth” and that what happened to his son should be a warning to anyone thinking of taking part in such events.
Mr Corfield’s son Ben was 19 when Dhiya Al Maamoury, 56, lost control of his heavily modified Nissan Skyline and crashed into him, killing him and friend Liberty Charris, 16, and injuring Ethan Kilburn and Ebonie Parkes on November 20, 2022.
Two others were also seriously injured in the collision, with Ethan Kilburn suffering a fractured pelvis, foot and right arm while Ebonie Parkes was left with fractured ribs, hips, leg and shoulder and a collapsed lung.
Al Maamoury was travelling at around 54 to 57mph before the collision – after an illegal street racing event was organised in Oldbury.
Street racers were using the section of the Oldbury Road between traffic roundabouts to perform circuits.
After Al Maamoury was jailed at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday, 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.”
He adds: “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.”
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.”
Detective Sergeant Paul Hughes from their Serious Collison Investigation Unit said: “The events and trauma of that day will never go away.
“These young people that were just starting their lives have now lost them because one person decided to show off.
“The decisions you make when driving can change the lives of someone forever and it takes just one second to make the wrong one.”
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