Darren Whittaker: Culpable crash killer caught drug, banned driving
Despite killing two mums in a crash 20 years ago, a never-licensed 38-year-old Cranbourne man is still terrorising other drivers on our roads.
South East
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A killer driver who has never held a licence has been jailed again for getting behind the wheel while banned and high.
Darren Whittaker was 18, when as a learner driver in 2001, he took the lives of two of his passengers — both young mothers — and hurt two more people and himself in a horrific crash.
His car, which he had only had for three weeks, became airborne at 120km/h after it sped over railway tracks in Pascoe Vale, smashing into a brick wall.
The two women died instantly while the other two passengers, both males, suffered serious injuries and Whittaker himself was rendered unconscious for four days.
In 2002 he was sentenced to five years in jail, with a minimum of three-and-a-half years behind bars.
Now aged 38 the unemployed Cranbourne man is still violating road rules by driving off his face on ice in cars with fake plates.
He has been caught driving while disqualified well over a dozen times, and been jailed for it on several occasions.
His lawyer said even if he did have a licence he would probably have “thousands” of demerit points accrued anyway.
Whittaker pleaded guilty to disqualified driving, drug possessions, thefts, handling stolen goods and bail breach offences at the online Frankston Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.
The court heard at around 1am on February 22 this year a passing police patrol noticed a suspicious vehicle on the South Gippsland Highway in Cranbourne.
They followed and five minutes later stopped the car, which was being driven by Whittaker and had two different plates on it, in a side street.
The Ford was unregistered with nicked number plates and had been used in a petrol drive-off a few days before.
Inside the car was an ice pipe and 3.66g of meth.
He then tested positive for drug-driving.
Whittaker was on bail at the time for drug possession after he was caught with ice in November in Cranbourne North and he had also been nabbed driving while disqualified in Cranbourne in September.
His defence lawyer said he conceded his client’s driving history was “atrocious” with a “horrendous” list of priors.
He said Whittaker made “terrible decisions” when on drugs, and knew he was “flaunting the law”.
Whittaker told the court he required assistance to get off ice.
“I need the help, I have been saying it for years,” Whittaker said.
“I want to try, but I know I have a lot of work to do.”
He said he “had grown up in jail, and didn’t know how to live outside”, but would benefit from a drug-based community corrections order.
Magistrate Gerard Lethbridge said he had had two decades of going in and out of prison.
“Why does he keep on driving — he stands out like the proverbial,” Mr Lethbridge said.
“Each time he does it, it is a fast route back into custody.
“It is remarkably self-destructive behaviour that’s entirely predictable.”
Whittaker was sentenced to three months’ jail, minus 59 days he has already served, and sent for a corrections order assessment.
