Accused in double fatal guilty
AFTER A WAIT OF THREE YEARS IN SEARCH FOR JUSTICE
FAMILY members of two North Queensland women who were killed in a horrific car crash by an unlicensed driver shed tears as they heard the words they had waited almost three years for: “guilty”.
On the sixth day in the trial of Kenisha Leighmay Illin, the jury took just over three hours to reach a guilty verdict – more than two-anda-half years on from the tragic crash which killed Ingham women Judy Reardon and Barbara Scott.
Illin had pleaded not guilty to a single count of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death, over the September 24, 2019 crash h on the th Bruce Highway at Bambaroo.
Illin claimed she had not been driving the white Ford Mondeo towing a large box trailer when the vehicle crossed the centre line and collided with Ms Reardon’s Toyota Corolla, which had been travelling north.
The impact caused the Mondeo, which had been carrying Illin and her father, to flip onto its roof, while the Corolla was pushed into a gully.
The court heard from multiple witnesses, including those who had seen the impact, and first responders on the scene who said Illin had been screaming in the moments after the crash that her “dada” had been driving the car.
Susan Dorries, who had been driving behind Ms Reardon’s vehicle and who had witnessed the crash, was first on the scene.
She told the court she had seen Illin in the upturned Mondeo crouching in the driver’s side facing the steering wheel, before she scrambled across to the passenger side where her injured father lay.
Four additional witnesses had seen Illin behind the wheel with a male passenger as they passed the Mondeo at the Helens Hill overtaking lanes, several kilometres from the crash site.
In their evidence, each had said the Mondeo had been swerving on the road, and even pulled over briefly, which defence barrister Darin
Honchin had submitted could have been an opportunity for Illin and her father to swap seats, despite no witnesses seeing the doors to the Mondeo open.
A man who had been on the scene after the crash gave evidence saying he heard Illin say “I’ve killed them”.
An audio recording of an interview between Illin and a motor insurance investigator, undertaken eight months after the crash, was played for the court.
In the interview, Illin claimed her father had been driving the Mondeo when a 4WD hit the back of the trailer. She also claimed the crash had occurred after her dad went to answer the phone, before losing control of the car.
Illin told the investigator she had saved her father’s life by performing CPR, and that she had dragged him from the wreck. No witnesses gave evidence to support any of her claims.
She also claimed she had seen Ms Reardon and Ms Scott waving and calling for help after the crash, a lie Crown prosecutor Monique Sheppard called “egregious”.
DNA from blood splatter on the Mondeo’s driver side window was found to match Illin’s at a likelihood of more than a billion to one, while male DNA had been identified on the passenger airbag.
Illin was remanded in custody while a psychological report is obtained. She will be sentenced in June.