Drunk driver haunted by night of shame

Wairarapa mother Tracy Kent killed 75-year-old Jim Lee after driving three times over the alcohol limit. Photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

Tracy Kent was so drunk she couldn't remember getting behind the wheel and killing a pensioner who was driving other drinkers home.

"The guilt's eating me alive. I'm the drunk driver who killed a man - that's what people will say, isn't it? That's all they'll see when they look at me," she says.

"But I brought it on myself and it's something I have to wear."

The 38-year-old solo mother has agonised about voicing her "shame and horror" at causing the death of Dial-A-Driver worker Jim Lee, 75, while driving three times over the blood alcohol limit, with lights off and against traffic, in a one-way Wellington street late last year.

"I don't want to offend or hurt Mrs Lee-Hesper [Lee's widow] any more than I have already. But I have to say, I need to say, how sorry I am.

"Whenever I'm on my own and my son's not around, I just can't hold it together. I just break down every time and I lie awake at night thinking of her being so lonely."

Kent escaped jail for killing Lee and was sentenced in Wellington District Court on Monday to home detention for 12 months, the maximum allowable.

Judge Ian Mill told Kent she had avoided jail "by the narrowest margin" after he accepted that enforced separation from her son would likely harm him.

He ordered Kent to undertake alcohol and other counselling and 200 hours of community service. He also banned her from driving for five years and ordered her to pay reparation of $30,000 to Lee-Hesper.

The court ordered her to use equity in her Eketahuna house to pay the reparation.

Kent said difficulties had been piling up on her ahead of her tragic trip to Wellington.

Kent, who has been sober since that night, acknowledges she has for years had a drinking problem. "I was very stressed out when I drove down from Eke. I was a single mum stuck inside with my son all the time in an isolated town where it was always raining.

"I arrived with hardly any money. I couldn't even afford to split a cab fare. I'd shaved my head for cancer and wasn't feeling very attractive. A friend's work colleague brought out a bottle of wine and started flirting with me. It was like a switch was flicked.

"I don't recall getting into my car and deciding to drive. I don't remember turning the key. I don't remember killing a man. I thought I was just going to lose my license and get fined.

"I wasn't told for days afterwards that Mr Lee had died. It was the blackest moment of my life when I heard." Lee died of his injuries a week after the December 23 collision. A passenger in the vehicle he was driving, Ricky Waitere, was injured.

Kent said she has been denied three times a restorative justice meeting with Lee-Hesper, although Waitere "forgave me" during a meeting arranged through the courts.

"If I didn't have a child I wouldn't have been fighting so hard for home detention. I deserve whatever I get.

"I don't expect to be forgiven, ever, but I hope I can make good wherever and for whoever I can."

Lee-Hesper, who was married to Lee for 47 years, accepted the sentence as fair, saying "it does not need to be that the child is punished as well".

However, the 73-year-old widow is unable to forgive Kent. "She spoiled her own life, my husband is gone and she has spoiled my life too."