A motorist who was jailed after causing the death a young footballer has been given the chance to get his driving licence back five years early.
Ryan Cardosi, originally from Wick, was sentenced to two years and eight months imprisonment and banned from driving for 10 years in 2009 after admitting causing the death of 17-year-old Scott MacKenzie.
But at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, judge Lord Brailsford allowed Cardosi to seek to restore his licence five years early.
He will have re-sit his driving test before being allowed back on the road.
Last night Mr Mackenzie’s mother Eleanor said that she was “haunted” by her son’s face, adding that her family had a “life sentence” after Scott’s death.
Cardosi lost control of his BMW 318 on the A882 Watten-Wick road near Bibster on December 27, 2008.
Promising Ross County footballer Scott was a passenger in the vehicle and died after the car left the road and smashed into a stone wall and a hedge.
Cardosi – who was 22-years-old at the time – was banned from driving for 10 years after admitting driving dangerously and causing the death of the teenager at the High Court in Glasgow in 2009.
He has now successfully petitioned the same judge who jailed him for the offence to seek to have his licence restored.
Representing Cardosi, solicitor advocate Richard Freeman told the court that his client now has two children and is working.
Cardosi now lives in Aberdeen and is employed by an oil company. Earlier this week he told the Press and Journal that he was going back to court in order to “move on with my life”.
Mr Freeman said: “Clearly the prison sentence has had a salutary effect on him.”
Lord Brailsford said he remembered the case which he described as “tragic”.
The judge said that when the offence was committed Cardosi was a young man and he had “paid a heavy penalty for his criminal conduct.”
Mrs Mackenzie said last night: “Ryan Cardosi was given a jail sentence of 32 months of which he only served 10 months and now wants to get his licence back.
“He was given 10 years of a driving ban from Judge Brailsford as ‘his hands were tied on the jail sentence’ but he gave him the maximum for the driving ban.
“You get a punishment for a reason and to lessen both punishments is making a mockery of the judicial system.
“Ryan Cardosi’s wish is to make life easier, well our family’s sentence is for life and our lives will never be the same again. My beautiful boy who’s face haunts me every day is gone and Cardosi’s hardship is nothing compared to ours.
“I am a great believer in what comes around goes around.”