Boss killed former child star
Businessman says he was a coward for fleeing crash
Abusiness owner who fled the scene after causing the death of an employee, was berated by mourning whānau yesterday as he was sentenced.
“Murderer!” one supporter yelled as Wiremu Gray, 42, was led by security out of the dock in the filled-to-capacity Waitākere District Court.
Gray received home detention and was ordered to pay $20,000 in reparations over the death of early 2000s television star Lionel Allan following a Friday evening of postwork drinks.
Gray had previously pleaded guilty to two charges: careless driving causing death, which carries a maximum punishment of three months’ imprisonment, and failure to stop and ascertain injury, which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.
“Not to remain present is seen as cowardly, and lacking decency and humanity,” Judge Lisa Tremewan told Gray. “This [death] is something you will need to carry, and that weight cannot ever be shifted.”
But the judge also emphasised that she cannot automatically give the maximum possible sentence without considering other issues, such as his “genuine and deeply felt” remorse, his guilty pleas and his lack of any prior criminal history. She also noted that the defendant’s marriage has been destroyed and his business appears to be hanging by a thread.
“It is clear to me that you are only just managing day-today.
Whether your business can survive this sentence remains to be seen.”
Both Gray and Allan, who was employed as a scaffolder, were among those socialising at their work address in Henderson, West Auckland, on the evening of September 30 last year, with most of those in attendance consuming alcohol, according to court documents.
Allan, 39, left the business on foot at about 7.30pm, wearing a high-viz vest as he walked along the footpath on the Concourse, a wide two-lane street in an industrial area.
Gray left the gathering about 15 minutes later. Gray would later tell police he had about four beers before driving off in his Mazda light truck.
As Gray approached Allan in the vehicle about 750m away, Allan “stumbled on to the road and continued walking on the road next to the footpath”, according to the agreed summary of facts. Gray said he was driving around a bend and looking down at his cellphone, which had slipped from the passenger seat to underneath his feet, when his vehicle struck Allan.
“The impact knocked the deceased back on to the footpath,” court documents state. “The deceased sustained traumatic injuries to his upper body and head as a result of being struck at speed and died at the scene.”
Instead of stopping to help the employee, Gray acknowledged that he drove to his North Shore home. He “panicked”, the business owner told police after turning himself in the following day, adding that he returned to the scene later that night in another vehicle.
Gray declined the judge’s invitation to sit down as Allan’s widow, parents, siblings and friends spent about an hour remembering him in a series of emotional victim impact statements.
“You will never know the pain you have inflicted on our family,” Allan’s wife, Laura, said through tears as she described having to move back to Australia with their two young children in the wake of the tragedy.
“Lionel was my life,” she said. “He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel like a queen. He was proud of me. He was always there to reassure me.”
She recalled the defendant calling her the next morning, not to take responsibility but to point out her husband had been drinking — a gruesome first attempt, she said, at trying to deflect blame on to the victim.
The couple had been together for 16 years and would have celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary this year, Laura Allan said.
Allan’s mother asked Gray how he would feel having to look at his own child in a casket. “You have brought every parent’s nightmare into reality”.
Allan’s father said: “The thought of my only son taking his last breath on a cold road all on his own . . . it’s something that crushes me every day”.
Gray pulled a letter of apology out of his suit jacket which the judge allowed him to read aloud. Some members of Allan’s family filed out of the courtroom.
“Yes, I was a coward, I acknowledge that,” Gray said of that night. “I froze. I panicked.”
He said he thinks about having caused his employee’s death every moment of the day, especially when his own children come to him — reminding him that Allan’s children no longer have a father. “I feel empty inside. I see all your anger and grief. I know this is all because of me and what I did. I’m sorry for being the cause of all your hurt, sleepless nights, anger, needing closure.”
Defence lawyer Emma Priest asked for a sentence of community detention so that her client could continue to support his employees. A psychological report showed a “fight or flight” response, which she characterised as an unconscious response to extreme trauma. “This offending is best described as completely out of character.”