Drug driver given jail
Mum of five ‘will never be the same’ after crash
AN ice-addled, fatigue-prone Ocean Grove man was repeatedly caught driving on drugs and unlicensed in the months before he almost killed a mother of five at Birregurra.
Bryce Richard Sewell, 25, was yesterday jailed for two years after admitting he had been on a methylamphetamine binge before the head-on crash on the Princes Highway early on a Sunday two years ago.
Geelong Magistrates’ Court heard Sewell’s ute crossed double lines on a sweeping bend about 12.15am on August 28, 2016, and ploughed into an oncoming car, sending both vehicles spinning and crashing.
Sewell and the driver of the other car were both trapped in their vehicles, the woman pinned by her arm and in a critical condition.
They were flown to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, where tests showed Sewell had methylamphetamine and amphetamine in his system.
“In my view this was no accident . . . you were a suspended driver,” Magistrate Michael Coghlan said.
It took four hours to free the woman. She was unconscious for eight days and almost had her right arm amputated. Her ruptured spleen was removed, she sustained a brain injury and fractures to her pelvis and back, and required skin grafts.
A mother of five schoolaged children, she said the crash had “effectively rewritten my life”.
“There are no words for the horror of all this,” the former refugee lawyer said in her victim impact statement.
“I know I will never quite be the same again.”
Prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Jacki Davis said police interviewed Sewell five months after the crash, the driver confessing he had taken four points of ice the night before the crash and was driving on minimal sleep.
Mr Coghlan said the man was earlier diagnosed with sleep apnoea, and questioned whether he was falling asleep in court as he sentenced him.
“I thought you were dropping off,” the magistrate said.
The court heard Sewell was caught driving with drugs in his system twice in the months before the crash, and the incident was the third of four instances in 2016 when he was nabbed driving while banned.
The fourth offence happened two months after the horrific crash.
“You didn’t seem to be too troubled or agonising over the injuries caused (to her) ... when you got behind the wheel,” Mr Coghlan said.
He contemplated sending the man to the County Court for sentence, but, with the victim’s blessing, decided to finalise the matter.
He rejected a submission to put Sewell on a corrections order, saying the man had been given those chances.
On counts of dangerous driving causing serious injury, drug driving and driving suspended, he was jailed for two years, and disqualified from driving for the same period. He will be eligible for parole after 15 months.