'All I wanted him to do was open his eyes and say dad, you want a hug?' - Grieving Dudley father explains why he wants Ben's Law
In an emotional interview with the Express & Star, Damian Corfield describes the heartbreak of losing his son at an unofficial street racing event - and why he's calling for a new law to stop such events.
A heavily built lorry driver, Damian Corfield comes across as the archetypal tough guy - until he describes the last time he saw his son Ben on a mortuary slab in a Black Country hospital.
Then his voice falters as he struggles to hold back the tears.
"We stroked his hair," he says. "He looked exactly the same. All I wanted him to do was open his eyes and say, 'Dad, am I ok? Dad, you want a hug?'
"The reality is that my son, he's never, ever, going to put his arm around his dad again."
Ben, 19, and his friend Liberty Charris, 16, were killed at an unofficial car meet in Oldbury in November 2022. And two-and-a-half years on, the emotions are clearly still raw for the Corfields.
Surrounded by pictures of their son at their home in Sedgley, Damian, 53, and wife Lynette, are explaining why they want people to sign the Express & Star's petition calling for Ben's Law https://chng.it/SxpmYB8gZJ, which would make it a criminal offence to attend, promote or organise street racing events or unauthorised car meets.
Recalling the day his son was taken from him, Damian tells how Ben had just returned home from his first weekend away with friends.
"He'd been to Liverpool, they'd had a great time," he says. "He'd come back on the Sunday dinner time, totally tired, they'd been up all night over the weekend enjoying themselves.
"He slept all afternoon and most of the evening, come to around nine o'clock and he'd been playing on his Xbox. He came downstairs and decided he was popping out for an hour."
Ben insisted he would not be out late, because he had got an assessment for his dream job as a technician for Tesla, and he would be travelling down to Northampton the following day.
"He said 'I only pop out for an hour, mum, dad' and as he'd normally do, he'd shout up and say 'love you' and we'd be 'love you' back."
Ben left the house about 9.40pm, and as time passed and he had not returned, Damian became concerned.
"He was only going to be out an hour and half past 11 and 12 o'clock had come, and I thought 'where is he?'
"But I wasn't going to ring him, I mean, he was 19, you know - the last thing he'd want is his dad, pestering him on the phone."
Just after 1am the doorbell camera detected somebody outside, and Damian thought Ben had returned home.
"The doorbell went, and it was two traffic officers.
"Our lives just came to a complete halt, all of a sudden," he says.
Damian's initial reaction was that it must have been a mistake.
"I said 'how do you know it's Ben? His car's still here'.
"They said he wasn't in a car, he was a pedestrian."
Police told Damian he would not be allowed to visit the scene of the crash, but he went out anyway. Most of the area was cordoned off, but his attention was drawn to a white Audi parked in Crystal Drive.
"I remember saying to Lynette, 'I wonder whose car that was', because it was a young person's car," he says. It turned out that the Audi belonged to Ben's friend Ethan Kilburn, who had taken Ben, Liberty, and Ebonie Parkes to the event.
"That was the car they had gone in. So they parked in Crystal Drive, and only walked a small number of yards around the corner. It had been advertised on Snapchat as a static car meet, which they thought would be on the industrial estate."
Damian describes how he and Lynette had longed for a son and brother to their daughter Shannon. They had been trying for another child for seven years, and Lynette was on the verge of starting fertility treatment when they received the joyous news that she was pregnant.
"I was lucky in that he wanted to emulate everything that I did," Damian says.
As well as the dream job with Tesla, Ben was also about to sit his HGV driving test, and planned to be the fourth generation to join the family transport business C H Mills, founded by Ben's great-grandfather Cliff Mills.
"As soon as he could walk, even before he could walk, he wanted to be in the lorry with me. If we changed our car, he wanted the key. From a young age, anything mechanical, anything with wheels on, Ben wanted to do, he wanted to spend time with me.
"Two weeks after we lost him we got his HGV booking. We got a truck for him that I ended up driving to the funeral, which was absolutely soul-destroying."
Ben also dreamed of following his father and great-grandfather into local politics.
"My grandfather was a councillor, and obviously I am, and Ben was really proud of that. He had chaired the youth council for a number of years, he was committed to giving back to society and community.
"Ben decided at 15 to put himself up for election as Dudley's youth member of parliament, and got elected. He got involved with all the things that affected young people, one of which was knife crime.
"He was quite passionate about that, and he put himself up for the youth police and crime commissioner.
"What he achieved as a 19-year-old lad, some of us would have wished to achieve in a lifetime."
Damian describes the moment, shortly after Ben's death, when three young people knocked the family's door to offer their condolences.
"I said 'did you know Ben?' They said 'if it wasn't for Ben, we wouldn't be here'.
"I said 'what did you mean?' They said 'we were suicidal, and Ben counselled us'. 'He's given us his phone number, he spoke to us, took us in his car'.
"He spent time with them, meeting for a coffee and a chat and different things."
Damian says that as a child, Ben had been bullied for being overweight, and had received counselling from the What? Centre in Stourbridge. "He picked up these skills from his counselling, and used them to help others."
A High Court injunction currently prohibits organised car meetings in public places within the boundaries of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Birmingham, but Damian says the laws need to be tightened to make them easier to enforce.
"What's happening is these events are being dispersed; these people race these vehicles there, they're only going from one area to the next," he says.
"The big hope with the petition is we want Ben's Law to be a blanket ban, to not only target the drivers for dangerous driving, and also the organisers, and a key part is those that attend."
At the moment, breaching the injunction carries a maximum two years in jail, but Damian wants to see the penalty for his proposed new law to be five years. But he says one of the biggest deterrents is having the cars seized and crushed, including those used by people organising or attending the events.
"These are not cheap cars, people spend tens of thousands of pounds on these cars. The fear of that car being crushed will be a big one," says Damian.
If 10,000 people sign the petition, the Government will be obliged to provide a formal written response. If it secures 100,000 signatures, it will become the subject of a parliamentary debate.
"People have asked me do I really think it will make a difference," says Damian.
"And yes, I do."
He stressed that a change in the law was not about marginalising a particular section of society.
"We're not talking about just one group of people, we're not talking one age group," he says.
"With car cruising and street racing, people automatically think it's associated with young, inexperienced drivers. But the driver that killed Ben and Liberty, and seriously injured Ebonie and Ethan, was 54 - than man knew bettert he wasn't an inexperienced driver.
"At 54 he knew that if he was going to drive a high-powered, highly modified car in close proximity to pedestrians, and lost control, he was going to, at least, seriously injure somebody."
Damian has also written to both the present and previous transport secretaries calling for local authorities to be given a specific fund earmarked for road safety.
Lynette, who has been quiet for most of the interview, appeals to people to sign the petition from a mother's perspective.
"I wouldn't want another mum to be in our position, wondering every day and age what my son would look like, seeing his friends grow up," she says.
"I'm never going to get to experience him having the love of his life, getting married, having a child. Please be wise and cherish every moment with your children."
