A complication of his cancer had overcome him and his frantic wife called their son Jake and his girlfriend Sheridan to come and look after their brother Billy while she rushed their father to the hospital.

Later that day, Jake would take Billy and Sheridan down into Echuca to get ice-cream and burgers, to take his mind off their dad’s ill-health.

What was supposed to be a “simple Sunday cruise” turned into “a few seconds of thrill” that would tear two prominent drag racing families apart.

Jake Cartledge was sentenced to a minimum of two years imprisonment for killing his partner Sheridan Coulthard, 26, and his little brother Billy, 11, in a horrific crash on the Murray Valley Hwy.

He was driving the 830 horsepower VK Holden Commodore drag car his dad, Wayne Cartledge, had built.

Luke Cartledge, Jake’s brother and a professional dragracer, told a court both families wanted answers in the aftermath of the crash.

He walked “every inch” of the road just minutes from their family home where the crash occurred with his dad Wayne – but it “just didn’t make sense”.

“We are third generation dragracers and classic car enthusiasts,” he said.

“My grandfather Gary was a dragracer, my dad Wayne was a dragracer for 35 years.

“My brother Jake and I have been drag racing since we were eight years old.

“Billy raced for the first time when he was nine.

Luke said he would spend “nights in dad’s shed tinkering and building race engines”.

“It’s our hobby and not reckless if carried out in race conditions and treated with respect,” he said.

“That’s who we are.”

Their father Wayne, a safety official for the Australian National Drag Racing Association, had raised his sons “never to speed on the street”, Luke said.

“We all understood this clearly and knew that racing was only for the racetrack.”

Jake Cartledge had claimed that a mechanical failure in the throttle had caused it to get stuck open, leading to uncontrollable acceleration that caused the crash.

Luke claimed that his brother “never made excuses” or “changed his recollection from that day”.

When Kylie arrived at the hospital with their son’s lifeless body, Wayne still a patient, collapsed on the floor with his wife.

Wayne Cartledge would not live to see his son plead guilty in the midst of his dangerous driving trial, dying from cancer 16 weeks after youngest son Billy.

“More than 1000 people attended Wayne’s funeral that was held at Calder Park Raceway to honour a man, and a family who took pride in and were well recognised nationally for upholding safety standards and rules and restrictions of racing,” Kylie said.

Kylie said it was the grief of his 11-year-old’s death that broke him in his long running battle with cancer.

“Our boys were raised to be the opposite of hoons or cowboys. Our cars, our engines, and our tyres were expensive, unique and cared for in a professional and respectful manner,” Kylie said.

“I remember Jake not allowing anyone in that car until the correct retractable seatbelts had been installed.”

But after days of overwhelming evidence that the throttle could not have become stuck open unless Jake had not planted his foot all the way down first – and a police mechanic showing the jury that the exact part he claimed failed was in working order – he reneged on his story.

Having supported her son in court every day of his “harrowing” trial, Kylie Cartledge was notably absent on the day he pleaded guilty – not being able to face the moment one of her sons would finally admit he was responsible for killing her youngest.

Perhaps it was listening to the horrific roar of the modified engine as her son put his foot all the way down on the accelerator and performed the fatal power skid that killed her son Billy – a sound that had sent her fleeing, wailing, from the courtroom.

Or perhaps it was the reality of facing each day without Billy, “an adorable little man with an infectious giggle, about to start grade six at Echuca Primary School”, with the scene of her husband’s Commodore wrapped around a tree, little Billy on a gurney in the highway, face swollen with a trickle of blood, burned into Kylie Cartledge’s mind forever.

She was finally forced to face the reality Jake was at fault.

The echoes of the life taken still resonate in the Cartledge home.

“Billy’s protective chest armour that we even made him wear while bike riding still hangs on the back of the kitchen stool,” Kylie said.

“His favourite bakery cookie scrunched up in a white paper bag uneaten on the bench.

“His dusty and dirty crocs that Sheridan’s dad took him to buy weeks earlier still sit next to the stool.”

She said his bedroom door has remained shut since the day he died.

“I can’t bear to see anything, to touch anything. I know I’m not emotionally ready to smell him,” she said through sobs.

“Unless you live this type of hell you would not be able to understand that there is also a part of wanting to preserve his smell, not waste it, in the fear that it could disappear completely.”

Since the “devastation” of Billy’s death there are no celebrations, no birthdays, no Christmases, no holidays filled with joy for the Cartledges, Kylie said.

“My family and my life were decimated within seconds on the 14th of January, and all our lives, along with any chance of joy and happiness were taken forever,” she said.

“There are no words strong enough to describe the pain of losing so many pieces of my heart at once and there are no words to describe the daily agony of what my son’s and I have lost and the lifelong torture we all must somehow attempt to navigate.

“The impact of the tragedy is permanent. The future we imagined has been taken from us and can never be returned.

“Every day is a reminder of what we lost, who is missing and what we will never have again.”

Every one of the surviving Cartledge’s blames themselves in some way, Kylie said.

“Every one of us carries our own version of guilt and grief and every one of us is tortured with the what ifs, I should haves and if onlys.

But expressing indignation and frustration at being “isolated and silenced” by the police investigation and then the prosecution, she pointed a figurative finger at the Coulthards.

“When Vera and Gavin said goodbye and waved them off, if they felt uncomfortable, they didn’t say so,” she said.

“And nor would have I, because we all knew that Sunday drives for lunch in classic Australian cars was something our family did every week, sometimes multiple times, and had Wayne not collapsed that morning we most likely would have all been in that car together.

“We all had a lot in common, we had all been to a car show together only weeks earlier.”

Sheridan and her parents Gavin and Vera and brother Jackson Coulthard were also car enthusiasts, and like Wayne, Gavin was heavily involved in the drag racing scene for decades.

In a terribly ironic twist, Sheridan and Jake met at a drag racing event.

“Soon after Jake and Sheridan met it was obvious to everyone that they had each found their life partner. So much so they worked hard, saved and bought a block of land in Moama,” Kylie said.

“The only recognisable part of the carefree young man Jake once was is his dedication to work and continuing to pay the mortgage he and Sheridan purchased together.

“For him that block symbolises their plans and their dreams and is all he has left of a life he once had.”

“That beautiful girl who deserved to be a bride, a mother and my treasured daughter-in-law.”

But she would never get to be any one those things, instead “Sheridan was taken from us way too soon, all for a few seconds of thrill”, her mother Vera Coulthard said.

“Now it’s leaving us with a lifetime of pain,” she said.

Vera said her daughter was “extremely paternal, her friends with babies called her the baby whisperer”.

“She had a sense of calmness about her and babies would fall asleep almost instantly,” she said.

“She couldn’t wait to have her own children. It was something she wanted more than anything.”

But now she would never see her grandchildren.

“There simply aren’t enough words to describe how losing Sheridan has impacted me, impacted all of us”.

“Socially I struggle. People just don’t know what to say to me.

“Some avoid me because they don’t want to ask how I’m doing at the risk of upsetting me. I try to push myself to be present in a room full of people, but instead, I feel isolated.

“I no longer live, I simply exist.

Sheridan’s father Gavin said most days his brain couldn’t function and he can’t even lift his arms to work – physically crippled by the pain of never seeing her again.

“The day she died, I died also.

“My heart is broken into a million pieces and I can’t find a way to put it back together.

“I struggle to breath as the anxiety just overwhelms me.”

Prior to the fatal crash Gavin worked with a professional top fuel racing team for 15 years where he pulled apart and rebuilt engines after every quarter mile – getting paid for something that he loved.

But after his daughter died in a drag car he could no longer give everything to the sport as he once had.

“I just couldn’t focus, so I pulled away because I didn’t want to put our driver at risk.

“Being a part of this team I needed to be able to focus 100 per cent as we strap the driver into a 10,000 horsepower vehicle.

“This sport was my passion and I was the longest serving team member in it – this sport was my release and now I don’t know if I will ever be able to go back.”

“This team became a part of my family and they allowed me to travel all over Australia and have an outlet, and now I feel like I’ve lost that too.”

Vera said it was “gut wrenching” seeing her husband drowning in grief.

“It’s so hard seeing a broken man. He tries to be strong in front of me, but I hear him crying in the shower,” she said.

Vera said family events were now filled with “dread” knowing that there was there’s always an empty place at the table.

“She made a fuss over me on my birthdays and Mother’s Days and Christmas,” Vera said.

“I would often say ‘don’t spend your money on me I don’t need anything. I have you and Jackson’.

“She would then say: ‘shush mum, you deserve the world’.

“We had an incredible bond, and now I’ve lost that forever.

“She wasn’t just my daughter, she was my best friend.

Vera remembers calling Sheridan’s brother Jackson and telling him about the crash.

She said all she could think about was Jackson having to drive two hours from Melbourne to Echuca knowing he would never see his sister again.

Even though he was three years younger, he was fiercely protective of her, as she was of him, Vera said.

“They even got matching pinky promise tattoos to symbolise that they would always be there for each other,” she said.

In a tragically bitter sweet occasion for Vera and Gavin, Jackson married his fiance Megan in October.

The wedding took place a month between the trial and the sentencing for their once-future brother-in-law who killed their beloved Sheridan.

They had to hold the wedding when they did because Megan’s dad was diagnosed with terminal brain tumour, another kick in the guts for the family.

A day which was supposed to be happy marred by the grief of losing Sheridan.

“I couldn’t bear the thought of celebrating (Jackson’s) special day without her and I feel I had to force myself to smile for Jackson’s sake because he deserves to feel joy on one of the most important days of his life, as did Megan,” Vera said.

The wedding could only remind Vera and Gavin that they would never see their daughter married.

“I will never get the chance at a father daughter dance at her wedding and I will never see her become a mum,” Gavin said.

“She was so good with kids and I know she would have been a great mother.

“We were all robbed of any chance of her future.

“I’m a broken man I just missed my girl and nothing will be the same ever again.”