Auckland boy racer who hit pregnant teen, causing baby’s death, loses Court of Appeal fight

An Auckland boy racer who hit a pregnant teen at an illegal event, resulting in her baby's death, appears in the High Court at Auckland for sentencing on a manslaughter charge. His name is currently suppressed. Photo / Dean Purcell

A boy racer who hit an eight-months-pregnant teen with his car while performing burnouts in front of an Auckland crowd – resulting in her baby’s death – has argued his prison sentence is manifestly excessive and should be replaced with home detention.

The Court of Appeal, in a decision released this week, was not persuaded.

Prior to his arrest in 2023, the now-24-year-old had posted a video of the incident on Instagram, calling spectators who stand on the street “idiots” and warning: “stand the f*** back or get whacked”.

He took down the post after learning of the baby’s death but then posted another warning on a different social media account: “To the people that got hit on the weekend keep these indoors and sort it cause if the pigs come to mine for that I’ll come to yours and smoke you end of.”

The driver has lost a bid for permanent name suppression but cannot yet be identified for legal reasons.

At his sentencing in the High Court at Auckland in July for manslaughter, the young woman he hit expressed forgiveness through a written victim impact statement read aloud in court. She blamed herself for attending the event as much as she blamed him, she wrote.

But Justice Michele Wilkinson-Smith said deterrence of others was an especially important part of the sentence so that all boys racers will “understand the risk they take and the consequences that follow”.

She ordered him to serve a sentence of two years and four months’ imprisonment.

It was also noted the defendant’s unregistered blue Holden Commodore could not have passed a warrant of fitness inspection and he was disqualified from driving due to previous traffic violations when he decided to participate in the illegal gathering in East Tāmaki on the night of May 19, 2023.

During a hearing last month before the Court of Appeal, defence lawyers Hannah Croucher and Amy Jordan argued their client should have been given greater discounts for his guilty pleas, youth, background and intellectual deficiencies.

Justice Wilkinson-Smith had allowed 35% in discounts for those matters, but the defence sought 50-55%.

The defendant was initially charged with driving dangerously causing injury, but the charge was upgraded three months later to manslaughter.

“This was understood to be the first occasion in New Zealand where the Crown had brought a charge of manslaughter for the death of a baby for injuries received in utero,” the Court of Appeal noted in its decision. “This raised complex legal issues.”

The unusual nature of the case, paired with communication issues with the defendant, meant it would have been difficult to enter a guilty plea at any earlier date than he did, the defence argued.

The appellate panel agreed that the odd circumstances properly explained the delay in pleading guilty to manslaughter. But they noted the defendant took no steps to enter a guilty plea to the more straightforward charges during the three months before the manslaughter charge was added.

“That charge did not require expert evidence,” the decision noted.

While some judges might have allowed a 25% discount due to the complex charge and communication issues, the sentencing judge’s 20% discount didn’t result in a manifestly excessive sentence, the panel opined.

The defence also pointed to a psychological assessment noting the defendant had a low executive functioning score and had the “air of a young man significantly younger than his chronological age”. They also pointed to his ADHD and a background that his former primary school principal described as “truly dysfunctional”.

On those points, the appellate panel didn’t entirely disagree, referring to his background factors as “quite weighty”.

“... We would have been inclined to allow a greater discount than the Judge gave for these factors,” the Court of Appeal’s 16-page decision read.

However, that was balanced by a 10% discount for rehabilitation efforts described by the panel as “arguably generous”.

“Overall, whatever weight is given to one factor over another, a total discount of 45% for all the overlapping personal factors and the guilty plea was about right and certainly within range,” the appellate panel decided.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

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