KEY POINTS:
A drink driver who ploughed into a group of teenagers at Whangamata has failed in his bid for home detention and been jailed for a year.
Dean Yaxley, 23, was sentenced in the Tauranga District Court yesterday after earlier pleading guilty to three charges of dangerous driving causing
injury and one of driving with excess breath alcohol.
The Mt Maunganui butcher was also disqualified from driving for three years and ordered to pay a total of $27,000 reparation to his three victims after his release from prison.
The sentence sparked mixed reaction from his victims and their families, some of whom wanted Yaxley kept out of prison so he could continue working and pay them compensation sooner.
Yaxley was 202 micrograms above the legal breath alcohol limit of 400 micrograms when he drove his five-litre modified V8 into Tauranga teens Mary-Beth Wood, Richard Lance and Nigel Fluharty on May 3.
The trio had been watching the annual Beach Hop car parade at Whangamata when Yaxley's Holden, which was carrying four passengers, fishtailed out of control and slammed into them while trying to pass other vehicles at speed.
All three victims suffered broken bones and one was hurled 26m by the impact. Yaxley also caused $6000 of damage to a house.
In a recorded victim impact statement, Nigel Fluharty, 18, told the court how he had been on the verge of pursuing a dream to become a theatrical electrician in the United States.
"This was before Dean Yaxley came literally smashing into my life."
His injuries included multiple breaks to his ankle, a broken leg and pelvis, a punctured spleen and severed tendons in his left hand.
His mother, Wanda Rudsits, said she had lost a new job while caring for her injured only son, and now had no income to pay for his education at San Francisco State University.
He is still on crutches and will require further surgery.
Outside court, he and his mother said they they were disappointed at Yaxley's prison sentence because they feared he would not pay the $12,000 he had been ordered to give Nigel.
"Obviously if he's in jail, he can't really do much," Nigel said.
Yaxley was also ordered to pay Mary-Beth Wood $12,000, but her mother, Donnamarie, felt differently about the sentence.
"Money's not the issue. You cannot put a price on scars that are going to be there forever. I'm glad he's going to prison, but I don't think it's going to be long enough."
Mary-Beth also remains on crutches, and said she had conflicting feelings towards Yaxley.
Yaxley already had a conviction for sustained loss of traction - a charge under the so-called "boy racer" legislation - which Judge Thomas Ingram said showed his attitude to driving.
Although Judge Ingram was satisfied Yaxley had changed that attitude since May 3 and shown genuine remorse, he said a sentence of home detention was inappropriate for offending which had caused great suffering to three innocent people and their families.
Yaxley's lawyer, Tony Balme, had argued that his client had entered an early guilty plea, already paid $8000 in reparations, and was prepared to pay $200 a week more to his victims for up to three years.
