DRUNK DRIVER DESTROYS MAN’S LIFE
Trent Heathcote was more than three times the legal alcohol limit for driving when he slammed his car head-on into a vehicle driven by Darren Mitchell.
Moments later a third car, unable to stop, smashed into Mitchell’s ute at speed. The combined impacts caused massive and near fatal injuries to Mitchell.
Eight-and-a-half months on from that crash on State Highway 1 near Karapiro on the night of Friday, October 13 last year, he is still very far from anything near a full recovery.
Mitchell and the man who all but destroyed his life were reunited in the Hamilton District Court last week, where Matamata resident Trent Ryan Heathcote, 26, was jailed for 22 months on a charge of driving with excess blood alcohol causing injury.
Heathcote’s ill-fated, inebriated and incompetent episode of driving began about 11.30pm that night, after he stopped at Mobil Karapiro for fuel.
As he turned onto the state highway he accelerated too heavily, causing the rear wheels of his car to lose traction.
He headed north, and for the next 2.5 kilometres turned his headlights off and on several times, and the right indicator.
He failed to negotiate a moderate left-hand bend, crossed the double yellow lines and collided with a car coming the other way. It was a glancing blow. Heathcote kept going north in the southbound lane. But he didn’t get far.
The next vehicle he hit was Mitchell’s ute, which he struck head-on. Moments later another car heading north came upon them and the already bad crash was made much worse.
Heathcote was found to have a blood alcohol level of 172 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, well above the legal limit of 50mg.
It was Mitchell’s day in court just as much as it was Heathcote’s, and through a lengthy victim impact statement that he read out in court, the injured man would have left the defendant in no doubt of the huge physical, financial and emotional havoc he had wreaked with his drunken antics behind the wheel.
Although he survived, Mitchell said he wondered whether that was a stroke of bad luck, rather than good fortune. He suffered numerous fractures, wounds, bruises and grazes.
‘‘I have had so many days where I have thought life is not worth living and I am receiving counselling for this.’’
Mitchell was aggrieved that Heathcote had made no effort to apologise to him.
That longawaited apology came almost immediately as Heathcote read out his own statement from the dock.
He explained that he had been upset and depressed by losing custody of his son, and had ‘‘turned to the bottle’’ as a coping mechanism. ‘‘I made a choice that put myself and others in harm’s way.’’
That mea culpa came too late for Judge Philip Connell, who noted that Heathcote had five convictions for domestic violence, and one for an assault on a police officer. ‘‘Your remorse is belated . . . I can’t consider that home detention would sufficiently mark the offending.’’
He jailed Heathcote for 22 months and disqualified him from driving for twoand-a-half years. The financial loss Mitchell suffered was at least
$13,000, but Judge Connell said he realised Heathcote would have little chance of compensating him while he was in prison.
He reduced the reparation figure to $5000, to be paid at a rate of
$50 per week, with payments starting one month after Heathcote’s release from prison.