Six years after a drug-addled juvenile killed a couple and their unborn kid when he ploughed into them in a stolen car, he will be released from custody.
When Kate Leadbetter, 31, and her partner Matthew Field, 37, were hit by a car in Alexandra Hills, east Brisbane, on Australia Day, they were about to become parents for the first time, to a baby they named Miles.
The driver, who cannot be identified because he was 17 at the time, blew a red light while driving a Landcruiser through Alexandra Hills, colliding with a truck before rolling over and hitting the pair.
The teen’s blood alcohol content was discovered to be between 0.151 and 0.192 percent at the time of the accident.
He’d been drinking and smoking marijuana since around 10 a.m. that day.
Mr. Field, 37, Ms. Leadbetter, 31, and their unborn child, Miles, all perished at the scene.
The adolescent escaped, taking keys from a nearby home before being apprehended and arrested by a neighbor.
The catastrophe was a “almost predictable result” of the teen’s activities leading up to the disaster, according to Justice Martin Burns.
The kid, who was first charged with murder but later pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter and a slew of additional offenses, looked stony-faced as he was handed down his punishment.
Given the teen’s long history of exceedingly unsafe driving that resulted in a profoundly irresponsible last conduct, Justice Burns described the manslaughter charges as “especially horrific.”
However, because of his youth, the adolescent had to be sentenced as a minor, with the ‘grave severity of the crime’ being balanced by his age.
The penalty was partly predicated on the fact that the adolescent had no intention of killing or causing serious bodily damage.
‘No punishment will be sufficient… (and) will not do justice to the anguish you have caused,’ Justice Burns told the adolescent.
Justice Burns said the then-17-year-old stole the Landcruiser 20 minutes before the deadly incident and drove it ‘hazardous for a continuous period at tremendous speeds’ with little regard for anyone’s safety.
The adolescent, who had a learner’s permit, drove twice the speed limit, on the wrong side of the road, doing a burnout on soccer fields, colliding with one vehicle, and nearly wrecking on other occasions.
Justice Burns stated that he was traveling at 102 km/h five seconds prior to the collision, with his brake lights flashing right before the impact.
According to Justice Burns, the teenager’s upbringing was “marked by profound deprivation and neglect.”
When he was nine years old, the child safety department intervened because he was self-harming, unattended, unfed, and exposed to domestic violence and abuse.
He used cannabis and meth on a daily basis, was regularly absent from school, and lived in parks at times.
On Tuesday, the couple’s bereaved families spoke before the court, fighting back tears.
‘For us, Australia Day will take on a whole new meaning.’ Russell Field, Matthew’s father, said before shooting the boy, “It will be a memorial day.”
‘How could you create such destruction in people’s lives and then do a runner at the first opportunity you had?
‘This was a low act, the lowest of lows, a dog act.’
Ann Field said her son and Ms Leadbetter were extremely happy and that she now felt paralysed.
‘They had a beautiful life together and they were bringing a beautiful life into this world,’ Mrs Field said.
Ms Leadbetter’s mother Jeannie Thorne described her only child as ‘the light of our lives, the hope for our future’ and broke down while describing the ‘unbearable … gaping hole in our everyday existence’.
‘I should be in my other life, the one that’s been ripped away, the life of a mother and a grandmother, I should be holding her baby boy,’ Ms Thorne said, reports the ABC.
‘We will never see our girl again, never have grandchildren. Our family is destroyed.’
John Leadbetter said he would never properly move on and would swap places with his daughter in a heartbeat.