SMILING devotedly at her baby, this photograph shows the love between mother and son.

Just a few months later, both Ellie Bongers and her son Joseph had both lost their lives following a car crash.

Last night Miss Bongers’ grieving partner Richard Gipps spoke of his loss after the smash devastated his family.

And Dr Gipps said he felt the actual fact they lost their lives was given less prominence by Judge Mary Jane Mowat than the impact on their surviving relatives.

Dr Gipps spoke after seeing pensioner Sally Rundle given a suspended sentence at Oxford Crown Court on Thursday for killing his partner Miss Bongers and 15-month-old Joseph.

Rundle, 72, of Oxford Road, Bodicote, must do 150 hours’ unpaid work after admitting two counts of causing death by dangerous driving. Her Renault Clio was on the wrong side of the road at Tackley on December 20, 2009, when it hit their Ford Ka.

Dr Gipps, who met his 32-year-old partner at Oxford’s Wadham College, said: “I wanted two things to come of it. One is to provide an opportunity for Mrs Rundle to expiate for what she did, and I suppose I wasn’t convinced from what I heard that she was able or willing to say ‘I acknowledge not just what happened, but feel sorry for what has been done’.”

He added: “It wasn’t clear to me that she was able to show contrition or guilt.

“I don’t know if 150 hours’ public service will give her an opportunity to do that. But I don’t think a custodial sentence, sitting alone in a cell, would have done that either.”

Miss Bongers’ father Nigel has raised about £40,000 for Oxford’s Helen House hospice – where Joseph passed away five months after the crash – while a memorial competition has been created at Lord Williams’s School in Thame where Miss Bongers taught English.

Dr Gipps, from Summertown, added: “I would have liked some posthumous recognition of their lives; that they were people who were valuable in their own right.

“In the sentencing I felt that was a bit lacking. Joseph was just embarking on his own little life and he had that taken away. Ellie, as a young mother who was just embarking on that facet of her life, had that ripped away.”

Dr Gipps added he hoped the legal system could reflect more posthumous recognition to people whose lives “have been utterly voided”.