The motorist who caused the crash that paralysed Sam Puttick, setting in motion a chain of events that ended in the boy’s parents committing suicide at Beachy Head, was later convicted of careless driving.

Nine months after the accident in 2005, magistrates fined Josephine Elias £660 with £75 costs and endorsed her driving licence with seven points.

Although the offence was considered minor, it was to have huge ramifications.

The accident caused Sam a catastrophic spinal injury that left him paralysed from the neck down and unable to breathe on his own, although his brain was unimpaired.

He died at the age of five from meningitis 10 days ago, leaving his parents Neil and Kazumi so distraught that they leapt from the notorious suicide spot near Eastbourne with their son’s body in a rucksack.

Elias, 52, a property consultant, runs a surveying company in Bath with her husband Tim.

In a statement issued through her solicitor this weekend she said she was “deeply saddened” by the deaths. Her solicitor pointed out that, as a result of a civil case, “very substantial payments” had been awarded to the Putticks to look after Sam.

They used the money to buy and convert Wishing Well Farm, in Brokerswood, Wiltshire, so they could provide 24-hour live-in care, equipment and therapies for their son.

The crash happened as Kazumi Puttick drove her car through the country lanes on the Somerset-Wiltshire border on a sunny July day. Sam, then 16 months old, was with her in the car, sleeping soundly.

On a long, sweeping, blind left-hand bend between the villages of Norton Ferris and Stourton, a Volvo V70 estate straddling the central white line smashed head-on into her car.

The vehicles were travelling at a combined speed of more than 100mph. According to reports that could not be confirmed, Elias was distracted by dogs in the car.

Sam was thrown through the windscreen and his child’s seat tumbled across the road, severing his spinal cord at the base of his neck. His mother was trapped by her legs and pelvis. Both should have died but a following car carried two off-duty anaesthetists who stabilised the pair until an air ambulance arrived.

For nine months, Sam was treated in the paediatric intensive care unit in Bristol. His spinal injury was similar to the one that paralysed Superman actor Christopher Reeve and he also contracted MRSA in hospital. Unable to breathe by himself, Sam was fed oxygen; and to move about he had a wheelchair he steered by blowing through an air tube.

The crash left Sam a quadri-plegic, yet all who knew his parents remember their lack of bitterness or self-pity. Friends said the couple always looked to the future with optimism convinced medical breakthroughs would one day improve his life, even to the point of a cure.

Neil and Kazumi, who was 10 years older than him, had a wonderful marriage, their friends said, and the tragedy drew them still closer.

They had met while temping in an office in the west country. She was a shy Japanese woman who had worked as a translator, and he was an archeology graduate from Exeter University who later became a website designer.

The couple married in Tokyo in a civil ceremony in 1997 and later had their marriage blessed in a church in Somerset. They were “mad about each other”.

After the accident, Sam became the “absolute focus” of their lives, according to friends. They gave up their jobs to care for their son while close friends began an impressive fundraising effort on a website called Stuff4Sam.

In January, Neil closed the fund, thanking contributors for their generosity. “You have given us a chance to see our son grow, despite the accident, into the same person he would always have been,” he wrote on the website. “They are now so close to a cure for spinal cord injury that in just a few years, it could be us that helped the scientists and doctors achieve . . . a complete repair . . . allowing people like Sam to breathe again, to walk and to touch and to feel.”

At Easter, the Putticks took Sam to Tokyo to see his Japanese grandparents. Because of his disability, the two-week trip needed an army of carers.

It took Kazumi four months to organise but brought much happiness. Her parents were due to arrive in Britain this weekend.

Nearly two weeks ago Sam suddenly became sick and was rushed to hospital with pneumococcal meningitis. It became clear that he had no hope of recovery and on Friday, May 29, he was allowed home to die peacefully.

The family went home by ambulance accompanied by nurses and a doctor who certified Sam’s death at 8 o’clock that evening. His parents then asked to be left alone to grieve and the medical staff left.

They did not appear suicidal. But, consumed by grief, they wrote an “extremely emotional” note and cancelled arrangements to meet family and friends. On Sunday they put two rucksacks, one containing Sam’s body, the other filled with his toys, including his favourite tractor, into their silver people-carrier and set off Beachy Head.

Jane Brake, whose sons Daniel, 5, and Jamie, 3, were close friends of Sam, heard from one of his teachers that he had died. She then wrote a letter of sympathy to his parents. “I thought, ‘Crumbs, what is going to happen to Neil and Kazumi, because he was so much their lives’.” It was Monday and Brake did not know the family’s bodies were already being recovered.

Brake said that, later, “when I heard there was a tractor in the rucksack, I knew instantly it would be Sammy. They all loved tractors . . . If we were harvesting or silaging, my two boys would drive the wheelchair through the mud and Sammy’s face lit up”.

Additional reporting: Simon Trump and Jack Grimston

Cure hope

WHEN Neil Puttick closed the fund to raise money for Sam’s care, he said: “[Scientists] are now so close to a cure for spinal cord injury.”

Hopeful developments include those based on embryonic stem cells. Trials have begun for a treatment in which cells are injected directly into injured parts of the spine.

If they are injected within 7-14 days, they could help the spinal cord regenerate itself and repair the wound. If successful, the treatment could be widely available within five years, although it is unlikely to benefit people who are already paralysed.

Other treatments being researched include the use of the enzyme chondroitinase, which can dissolve scar tissue around spinal wounds; tissue grafts and the development of artificial materials to bridge gaps in the spinal cord.

Friends of the Putticks are asking wellwishers to donate to the charity Spinal Research.

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