Lhean Doctolero avoids jail after friend injured in alcohol-fuelled circlework on Gunn Point beach

An apprentice boilermaker whose three friends were thrown from the vehicle as he did circlework on the beach while they egged him on to “go faster” has avoided a jail sentence.

Lhean Doctolero outside the Supreme Court in Darwin on Thursday where he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing serious harm. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

An apprentice boilermaker whose three friends were thrown from the vehicle as he did circlework on the beach while they egged him on to “go faster” has avoided a jail sentence.

Lhean Doctolero pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court in Darwin on Thursday to one count each of dangerous driving causing serious harm and reckless endangerment.

The court heard the 21-year-old had travelled to Gunn Point for a weekend camping trip in May last year when he and three other men began drinking and taking turns doing “doughnuts and drifting manoeuvres”.

Lhean Doctolero outside the Supreme Court on Thursday. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

At about 3am, Doctolero was behind the wheel of a RAV4 while the three others were clinging to the outside of the vehicle as he started doing “circular turns and figure of eight manoeuvres”.

Justice Meredith Huntingford said the three other men “all shouted at you to drive faster” while Doctolero sped up and “conducted a sharp right turn”, sending the others flying.

Two of the others were not seriously injured but when Doctolero drove back to where they lay in the sand he found one of them face down and not moving, with blood on his temple.

Doctolero and one of the other men started CPR before bundling the injured man into the RAV and calling triple-0, eventually meeting paramedics on the road back to Palmerston.

The court heard the man was treated for serious injuries including a traumatic brain injury and multiple broken bones and went on to spend 15 days in a coma.

The court heard Doctolero had apologised to his injured friend ‘and he has accepted your apology’ after spending 15 days in a coma. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

Justice Huntingford said while Doctolero, who recorded a blood-alcohol reading of 0.065 after the crash, did not set out to injure anyone, “the risk of harm was obvious”.

“It is relevant that your friends engaged in the reckless activity willingly and were urging you to drive faster,” she said.

“However, you were the one in control of the vehicle and it was your responsibility to drive safely.

“In driving in the manner that you did and in making the sharp turn, you acted without sufficient regard for the safety of the victims.

“The peer pressure from the victims to drive faster and exposing them to the risk of harm does reduce your moral culpability a little but not to a very significant extent.”

But in handing Doctolero an 18-month community corrections order and disqualifying him from driving for 12 months, Justice Huntingford said it was to his credit that he tried to help his injured friend.

“You have apologised to him and he has accepted your apology,” she said.

Justice Huntingford also noted Doctolero had strong family support, full time employment and excellent prospects for rehabilitation.