Jennifer Croker: Convicted for collision, injured Lucy Woolfman

A top lawyer left an award-winning TV makeup artist with horror injuries after knocking her off her motorbike in a sickening crash. In emotional scenes in court, the victim told how her life had been ripped apart and how she thought she was going to die as she lay on the tarmac with a brain bleed and fractured spine.

Lawyer Jennifer Croker

A successful lawyer who has taken her humanitarian efforts across the globe has now been tarred with a criminal conviction after a momentary lapse of concentration resulted in catastrophic injuries for an up-and-coming makeup artist.

Shortly before 7.30pm on September 9 last year, Gordon woman Jennifer Croker, 36, left her Sydney office and took an unfamiliar route in her Toyota Yaris to visit her sick mother in hospital.

About that same time, award-winning make up artist Lucy Woolfman was travelling on a motorbike.

Award-winning make up artist Lucy Woolfman.

At the intersection of Margaret St and Clarence St when a red turning arrow went blank the lawyer failed to give way and slowly turned into the path of Ms Woolfman.

The court saw footage of the two vehicles colliding in terrifying fashion in front of pedestrians and motorists, with Ms Woolfman catapulted six metres in the air.

An emotional Ms Woolfman told the court the ambulance didn’t arrive for 45 minutes as she lay on the road struggling to breathe, with intense pain shooting through her leg.

Ms Woolfman suffered a brain bleed, punctured lung, shattered knee cap, broken ribs, broken foot and fractured spine.

“I have spent every day the last year questioning how you could leave me dying on the side of the road and not once check on me in 45 minutes,” she said.

“I was sure I was going to die. My whole world was entirely ripped apart from the negligence of one person.”

An appeal judge later found that while Ms Woolfman had formed the belief that Ms Croker did not attend to her after the accident, he could not make a finding that Ms Croker had failed to comply with her legal obligations to stop and assist based on the evidence before him.

The woman, who was using a wheelchair, told the court of how she had been an active and healthy woman before the crash and how her promising career collapsed overnight.

“Before the crash my job was my world. My career was a promising one,” she said

“It is a cutthroat industry and it will not wait for me to get better.”

Ms Woolfman told the court her leg remains broken almost a year since the crash.

Croker’s lawyer said his client stayed at the scene for three hours, had just two blemishes on her 20 year driving record and was remorseful.

“This was a terrible incident where the consequences were catastrophic,” he said.

“ (Ms Croker) accepts she failed to see a motorbike coming towards her as she took that turn.”

The lawyer asked Magistrate Erin Kennedy to not record a conviction, saying Croker deserved the chance.

“On the road we are all responsible for one another and we all depend on each other in these moments, to take that extra second,” Ms Kennedy said.

“General deterrence is what looms very large, that the reminder goes out to the community if you don’t take that extra second the outcome could be catastrophic.”

Croker was convicted of negligent driving occasioning grievous bodily harm, disqualified from driving for two years, fined $1500, ordered to complete a traffic offenders program and placed on a community corrections order for two years.

Editor’s Note: this article was amended after publication to reflect a subsequent appeal court decision.