Drink-driver Neil Hutchison faces victims in sentencing hearing after car park crush at Westfield Tuggerah
Former dentist-turned-alcoholic Neil Hutchison hears from the victims he crushed with his unregistered mini van in the Coles car park of Westfield Tuggerah.
Three women crushed between their cars and an out-of-control mini van in a shopping centre car park have told a court of their recurrent nightmares, fear of reverse lights and how they will never fully recover from their horrific injuries at the hand of a serial drink-driver.
Former dentist Neil Hutchison faced a sentencing hearing at Gosford District Court today after pleading guilty to a raft of offences including aggravated dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm, high range drink-driving and being a disqualified driver behind the wheel of an unregistered, uninsured car.
The court heard the 52-year-old from Mardi on the Central Coast had a history of drinking alcohol from as early as 7am and was on an eight-month suspended jail sentence for two previous drink-driving matters when he drove to Tuggerah Westfield to buy more grog.
After buying two bottles of wine from Liquor Land about 5.35pm on March 26, 2018, Hutchison got into an unregistered, uninsured Mitsubishi Nimbus.
He drunkenly put the vehicle in reverse, instead of drive, and reversed “at speed” into two sisters, aged 14 and 18, who were unloading groceries into their car and another woman, 40, who was getting her toddler out of his child restraint.
In victim impact statements read out in court, the three women described the horror as the silver-coloured Nimbus pinned them against their cars, shattering teeth and bones, before it took off and smashed into other parked cars 34m away.
“I still have flashbacks of when I was knocked off my feet and pinned against my vehicle,” the 40-year-old single mother said.
She described the feeling of helplessness being face-to-face with her screaming son but not being able to do anything and how, if she had been a fraction earlier in getting him out of his seat, the 18-month-old “could have been crushed in the impact or fatally dropped”.
She suffered fractured teeth, ruptured ligaments and three fractures in her left leg, which required two metal screws.
It took the once keen gym user and salsa dancer several months to be able to walk again but will never be able “dance like I used to” or kneel down to play with her son.
The older sister spent six weeks in a wheelchair and eight months “fighting to walk again” after her pelvis was shattered in four places along with two fractured lower vertebrae.
She had six screws inserted and a plate to hold her pubic bone together meaning she will likely never be able to give birth naturally.
The former first grade hockey player, who was working three jobs at the time, said her physical and psychological injuries left her “depressed, upset and angry”.
“I am angry he has impacted my life, my sister’s life and my family’s life,” she said.
Shocked bystanders restrained Hutchison at the scene before police arrived and he returned a blood alcohol reading of 0.278 before he was taken to hospital with a laceration to his forehead.
In the witness stand he maintained he did not try to flee the scene but instead “ditched” his car into parked cars because he could not stop.
He said his shoelace must have got caught around one of the pedals, which prevented him from lifting his foot off the accelerator.
But he conceded it was “probably more likely” it was because he was heavily intoxicated.
The court heard he had been caught at an RBT on March 18 the year before at 11am when he returned a reading of 0.171 and again three months later “swerving around the road” before recording a reading of 0.275.
He said “I knew there were people behind me” and hearing their statements was “difficult to listen to but necessary”.
“I remember feeling appalled, ashamed,” he said.
“It was an absolute nightmare. I knew I had hurt people, their screams stay with me every day, every night.”
He will be sentenced on July 26.
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