Former child abuse material collector who killed little girl in meth fuelled crash asks for licence back
A Queensland man who killed a seven-year-old girl while driving high on meth is trying to get his licence reinstated after last fronting court for his sick stash of child exploitation material.
A Queensland man who killed a seven-year-old girl in a crash while high on meth is trying to get his licence back a decade after a judge deemed he should never drive again.
The former Ipswich man, Joshua Adam Thomas, is now living in Harlaxton where he intends to make an application before the Toowoomba District Court for his drivers licence to be reinstated.
The 39-year-old, who has an assorted and dark criminal history, fronted the higher court on Tuesday, November 18, and asked for the court to delist his application hearing because he needed more time to prepare.
The little girl, Aleigha Stelzer, was killed in the Redbank Plains crash in 2012, after Thomas, who had more than twice the toxic level of meth in his system, had picked her up from school.
The child’s mother was a flatmate of Thomas’s.
When Thomas was sentenced in 2014, the Ipswich District Court heard he had been smoking meth all day before leaving to do the school run.
He was sentenced to serve at least three years of a nine year head sentence after pleading guilty to dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death and grievous bodily harm while adversely affected.
As part of the sentence his licence was disqualified indefinitely.
In 2015, Thomas successfully appealed the length of his sentence, which was reduced to a head sentence of seven years, and parole eligibility after two years and four months was served.
While out on parole in 2017, Thomas breached the order after police uncovered his sick stockpile of child exploitation material containing almost 40,000 files.
In 2019, the then father-of-seven pleaded guilty to possessing and accessing the child exploitation material and was sentenced to a three month jail term, to run accumulative to his previous jail term.
He was deemed eligible to apply for parole after serving 12 weeks.
In 2020, police again found Thomas with child exploitation material on his phone, which he pleaded to possessing before the Ipswich District Court in 2021.
The court heard there were two images found on the phone which he tried to hide from police under his mattress.
On that occasion he was sentenced to a 58 day jail term, and released from custody after the days were declared time served on remand.
A court date for Thomas’ application hearing to have his licence reinstated, which is opposed by the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, has yet to be set after being delisted in November 2025.
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Originally published as Former child abuse material collector who killed little girl in meth fuelled crash asks for licence back
