Fatal crash drug driver Joshua Adam Thomas faces court for possessing child exploitation material

An Ipswich man who crashed his car while driving on meth, killing a young girl, has been busted with child exploitation material again.

A man who killed a seven-year-old girl when he crashed his car while drug driving has faced court again on child exploitation material charges.

Joshua Adam Thomas was high on meth when he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his car into a tree, killing his then housemate’s daughter and seriously injuring one of his children in 2012.

Thomas, 35, was on parole for this offence when police busted him with child exploitation material on his phone in September last year, the Ipswich District Court heard on Wednesday.

Emergency crews at the scene of the Redbank Plains crash in 2012. Picture: David Nielsen

Police attended his house and saw him on his bed with a phone but when asked to produce it Thomas lied and told the officers he didn’t have one.

However, when they said they had seen him with it Thomas grabbed it out from where he had hidden it under a mattress.

Police found one image of a naked young girl exposing her genitalia to the camera and one video of a naked pre-pubescent girl exposing herself on the mobile.

The court heard Thomas said he did not know how the material came to be on his phone.

Crown prosecutor Amanda Robinson said Thomas was a “mature, recidivist” offender.

Thomas had previously been sentenced for child exploitation charges in 2019 after he was caught with about 30,000 child exploitation material images and videos.

In 2014 Thomas pleaded guilty in the Ipswich District Court to dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing death while adversely affected by an intoxicating substance and was sentenced to nine years.

The sentence was later dropped to seven years on appeal.

A judge sentenced him to three months in prison to be served on top of this seven year sentence for the child exploitation charges in 2019.

He was also given two 12 month sentences to be suspended on the condition he entered two year good behaviour bonds with a recognisance of $2000.

When Thomas was caught in September last year he was on parole and subject to these bonds.

The court heard Thomas had been in presentence custody for 414 days, 58 of those solely for the possess child exploitation material charge before the court.

Judge Dennis Lynch said the charge was serious but Thomas’s offending was at the lower end of the scale compared to his similar offences in 2019.

Thomas was released from custody on Wednesday after Judge Lynch sentenced him to 58 days in prison and declared his presentence custody as time served.

Judge Lynch said the breaches of his good behaviour bonds were proved and he was not further punished on those.

Thomas was ordered to forfeit the mobile phone he was caught with.