A WOMAN who caused a crash that killed her six-year-old nephew had been drinking at a playground during the afternoon and was more than three times over the limit when she strapped two kids into her car and got behind the wheel.
To describe what happened on New Line Road outside Seaham on the afternoon of July 21 last year as a tragedy would be an understatement.
A woman inexplicably drinking and driving with two kids in the back seat, a seemingly avoidable accident, a young boy's promising life cut short and a once close relationship between two twin sisters forever fractured.
"I'm sorry for what I have done to [the boy]," the woman, who the Newcastle Herald has chosen not to name to avoid identifying the young boy, said through tears in Newcastle District Court on Thursday. "I'm sorry to my family and my daughter that I am going to leave now because of this. "I so wish it was me and not [the boy]. "I'm so sorry."
The woman, now 30, had taken her daughter and nephew to a park at Seaham on the afternoon of July 21 last year. A little before 5.50pm she buckled the pair into their seats and set off home to Raymond Terrace.
"Sad is an understatement for what occurred last year on the back road between Seaham and Raymond Terrace," defence barrister Terry Healey said on Thursday. "It has no doubt effected many, many people."
The woman told witnesses at the scene and later police that she had been drinking alcohol during the afternoon and police found empty cans of pre-mix spirits in the car.
During a police interview, the woman said she had drank a 1.5 litre bottle of alcohol at home and then bought a four-pack of pre-mix spirits.
She said she had probably drank three bottles of pre-mix alcohol at the playground while the children played before getting back behind the wheel.
The woman said she thought she might have been over the limit but not by too much and that something in the back seat had distracted her in the moments before her car left the road and crashed.
In fact, the woman's blood alcohol content was 0.153 - into the high-range and more than three times over the limit - with a forensic pharmacologist opining that her driving ability would have been "very substantially impaired" at the time of the crash and any distraction she suffered was consistent with her being intoxicated.
"The offender drove in this state at a time of day when others may well have been on the road, the conduct thus created significant danger to other road users," Judge Tim Gartelmann, SC, said on Thursday. "Moreover she drove in this state with two children as her passengers for whose safety she had assumed responsibility."
Judge Gartelmann sentenced the woman to a maximum of three years jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months.
