Sentencing delayed for Storm Tientjes after Good Friday fatality that claimed life of tourist

A young woman who caused a Good Friday road fatality has made a last-minute bid for a reduced sentence, revealing her own daughter had been abducted years earlier. What will happen now>

Tasmanian woman Storm Cecilia Tientjes has pleaded guilty to causing the death of a female tourist last year by dangerous driving. Picture: Facebook

A young woman who caused a Good Friday road fatality has made a last-minute bid for a reduced sentence, revealing her own daughter had been abducted years earlier.

Storm Cecilia Tientjes, 27, was due to be sentenced on Tuesday this week for dangerous driving causing the death of 29-year-old tourist Shadari Athrey at Copping last year.

Tientjes, sleep-deprived and drug-affected, had fallen asleep at the wheel and veered onto the wrong side of the road, crashing into a hired MG driven by Mrs Athrey’s husband.

However, defence barrister Fabiano Cangelosi asked for an adjournment before a final determination was made on Tientjes’ fate, saying he had further submissions to make.

On Friday, Mr Cangelosi told the Supreme Court of Tasmania that Tientjes was just 18 when her daughter was abducted and taken interstate.

He said Tientjes had suffered hardship in her early years, was the victim of abuse, was in unstable housing and had mental health conditions – and there was little she could do to get her daughter back.

Mr Cangelosi said Tientjes ended up using a gram of ice a day “as a vice to escape her traumatic past” and was not able to pursue the recovery of her child.

He said she had also suffered serious sexual assault, had been the victim of serious domestic violence – including a period where she was not permitted to leave her home – and had been badly beaten up by a group of people in another incident.

On this background, Mr Cangelosi said, Tientjes had started to sell her belongings so she could get interstate and find her daughter.

He said she had driven to Dunalley over a job on a fishing vessel that would finance this trip – but it was when she drove her friend and her friend’s child away from that meeting that the accident happened.

Mr Cangelosi already read a statement written by Tientjes that she had “not been wasting my time in prison so far”, and that she’d been undergoing rehabilitation and taking part in education.

“I cannot take back anything as much as I wish I could with every fibre of my being,” Tientjes said in her statement.

“I am genuinely remorseful for the suffering I have caused.”

Tientjes, who has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death plus 10 other related charges, including reckless driving, and driving with cannabis and methamphetamine in her blood, is now expected to be sentenced on September 27.

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