A mother has spoken of her horror after a drug driver almost left her seven-year-old-son crushed against a tree.

Maria Aitken described the horrifying moment she saw Ji Lawrence, then 17, plough into an oncoming car after a police chase along Faversham Road, in Kennington.

The mother-of-two had been at the fish and chip shop with her son Dylan, seven, and daughter Sienna, five, when they watched the horror unfold.

Miss Aitken, 43, said she saw Lawrence’s silver MG ZR being chased by a police car and failing to stop at a junction.

She then looked on in terror as she saw his car smash into an oncoming BMW, which lost control and slammed into the tree where her son had been standing.

She said: “It was beyond awful. I went into a panic and just kept saying ‘oh my god’.

“I just kept thinking ‘oh my god he was hit and squashed against that tree’.”

Miss Aitken said her family had just come back from visiting her terminally ill mum in hospital and decided to get a takeaway because it was quite late.

As they were waiting for their dinner, Dylan told her he desperately needed the toilet so she had taken him across the road to go in the bushes.

She was standing by the shop with her daughter when the nightmare unfolded.

She said: “Out the corner of my eye I saw the BMW hit the tree where my son had been standing.

“I ran across the road shouting ‘Dylan, where are you’ but I couldn’t see him.

“I looked by the tree and he wasn’t there.”

But when the car came hurtling towards him, the quick-thinking Repton Manor Primary School pupil had actually jumped over the picket fence of a nearby house.

Miss Aitken said: “He was in the garden crying and shouting for me but I couldn’t hear him because of all the sirens.

“I eventually found him, picked him and he was in an absolute state.

“Luckily he only had a couple of cuts on his legs but he was very traumatised.”

Dylan and his sister were checked over by paramedics at the scene, while Miss Aitken and other witnesses gave statements.

Lawrence was arrested.

It happened on on August 13 last year.

"I ran across the road shouting ‘Dylan, where are you’ but I couldn’t see him...I looked by the tree and he wasn’t there" - Maria Aitken

Miss Aitken said: “At the time I was really annoyed with the passenger in his car because when I said ‘do you realise the seriousness of what you’ve done?’ he just shrugged his shoulders and said ‘well I wasn’t driving’.

“Dylan had nightmares for a couple of weeks after the crash.

“For the rest of the summer there were problems with his behaviour and he was obviously very affected by the incident.

“He will not talk about it and anytime anyone mentions it he just shuts it down, that’s how he deals with it.

“I know that Dylan is still affected by it. You can’t deny how serious it was, it was a horrible experience for everyone, but in particular, my son.”

Miss Aitken said the police played her the shocking CCTV of the crash, which showed just show close her son had been to being hit.

She said: “It was really upsetting to watch. My son is so lucky be alive.

“It’s good Lawrence admitted the charges, so he should.

“It is a relief that he has been held accountable. I just want to know the outcome and his sentence so we can put it to bed.”