Wyongah crash drink-driver Marlee Kelley sentenced
A young chef who left her partner with critical head injuries after ploughing into a tree while drunk has no recollection of the crash. It comes as blood samples taken afterwards were never sent for drug testing, a court has heard.
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Marlee Rose Kelley, of Tuggerawong, gave evidence at her sentencing at Gosford District Court on Wednesday where she said she had “no recollection” of the crash which left her then partner with lifelong head injuries.
The 25-year-old told the court she spent seven months at Dooralong Rehabilitation Centre following the crash two years ago and besides one “slip up” with cannabis in September last year had been drug and alcohol free since.
An agreed set of facts, tendered to court, state Kelley had been in an intimate relationship with a 35-year-old woman for about three months before moving in with her.
About four weeks later the pair arrived at the Wadalba McDonalds in a silver Holden Commodore station wagon at 5.57pm on October 1, 2018.
CCTV footage shows Kelley’s partner was driving and both of them got out of the car and enter the restaurant.
A while later the CCTV shows them return to the car with the victim getting into the driver’s seat.
Kelley is then seen to exit the front passenger’s door, walk around to the driver’s side door where she dragged her girlfriend out of the driver’s side by the hair.
Kelley assaulted her partner before both tussled and got back into the car with Kelley behind the wheel.
She took off along the Pacific Highway and onto Johns Rd so fast a frightened motorist had to pull over “out of fear of being either run off the road or impacted”, the facts state.
Another witness later told police they saw the Commodore stop in the middle of the road where a female passenger tried to get out only to be dragged back inside by the driver before both exchanged a flurry of punches.
Kelley accelerated away before turning into Cooranga Rd, at Wyongah.
The court heard Kelley lost control on a left hand bend, glanced a tree before ploughing head on into another tree.
Her girlfriend was not wearing a seatbelt and both were trapped in the wreckage for some time until emergency services arrived.
The facts state Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit officers attended and assessed Kelley must have been travelling 126km/h when she lost control, or 76km/h above the 50km/h speed limit.
Blood tests at hospital showed she was under the influence of alcohol at the time.
The Crown prosecutor told the court while the results showed she had a blood alcohol reading of 0.141 — just shy of high range — her blood samples were never tested for the presence of drugs.
Kelley was flown to Royal North Shore Hospital while her partner was flown to Westmead Hospital with critical head injuries, where she remained in a coma for more than a week.
Kelley had previously pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm while travelling more than 45km/h and two counts of common assault.
The court heard a number of “back up” offences including drink-driving were withdrawn and dismissed.
“I’m so sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone,” Kelley told the court.
“It’s really hard, I never thought in my life I could injure someone.”
Kelley said her drug and alcohol abuse started when she was aged 13 or 14 and the crash had “pretty much turned my life and my family’s life upside down”.
Her barrister John O’Sullivan asked the court to consider her time in rehab as “quasi-custody” and sought she serve any custodial sentence by way of an intensive corrections order.
However Judge Tanya Bright said the only appropriate penalty was full time incarceration and sentenced her to a total of three years and four months jail with a non-parole period of two years.
Judge Bright backdated the non-parole period to May 13 in consideration of some of the time Kelley had spent in “quasi-custody” at rehabilitation.
Kelley was also placed on community corrections orders for 12 months and two years for the two counts of common assault and disqualified from driving for 13 months from the date she is eligible for release.