THE mother of a four-year-old left for dead by an uninsured driver says it will take a long time before her daughter gets over the trauma.

Christina Kowalchuk has criticised the suspended jail sentence handed to the teenager driver responsible for leaving her in the middle of the road clutching her “bleeding child”.

She said the suspended jail sentence was unlikely to act as a deterrent for 19-year-old Zaheeb Bokhara and that she and her husband, Brian Fahy, were lucky their daughter is alive.

Ms Kowalchuk said: “While Tessa is physically recovered, barring a few scars that she may bear for life, she did spend the night in hospital, and was monitored after that by doctors.

“It was terrifying for all of us, including her six-year-old brother, who witnessed the incident along with me, and watched that car drive away while I was stood in the road screaming and crying, holding my bleeding child.

“Our daughter is now very nervous about crossing the road, and about cars in general.

“This is not something our family will truly recover from for a while to come.”

Tessa was riding home from school on her brother’s scooter in Rose Hill when she was hit by the car driven by Bokhara, of Howard Street, Oxford, on February 22.

Ms Kowalchuk added: “It is true she rolled into the road after losing control of her scooter. But she had come to a stop in the road and was there for several seconds before the car came along and hit her.”

After being told by doctors that Tessa's helmet saved her life, Ms Kowalchuk is urging parents to make sure their children have the right safety equipment.

She added: "We want to urge other parents to put helmets on their children when they're riding scooters.

"I know a lot of people don't think about it. Scooters don't seem as dangerous as bikes, somehow, or your kids only ride them to go down the road and it doesn't seem worth it.

"But this happenbed to us on our way home from school. Several doctors at A&E told us that her wearing that helmet was all the difference - it may have saved her life."

Bokhara was handed a 20-month jail sentence suspended for 24 months on Friday at Oxford Crown Court.

He was also ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work and to pay the Kowalchuk family £250 in compensation and a further £500 to a man he lied about and claimed was the driver.

Ms Kowalchuk added: “To us the sentence doesn’t seem commensurate with the crimes and we wonder if it will be enough of a deterrent.

“While we don’t wish a young person to be punished unduly for poor decisions he may have made in a panicked state, the crimes he committed seem serious enough to warrant an actual sentence, not a suspended one that leaves the door wide open for him to make similar errors again.

“We sincerely hope he will change his ways. If not, we hope no one ends up dead next time around. We were very lucky with our daughter.

“We wish to state our thanks to the police, whom we know worked extremely diligently on this case.”