A WOMAN high on ice who hit a cyclist with her car and left him with “horrific” injuries has been sentenced to six years in a Victorian jail.
Rebekah Stewart, 24, had been taking ice when she drove on to the wrong side of the road in Ballarat in March 2016, hitting cyclist Christian Ashby head on.
Judge Michael McInerney sentenced Stewart to six years in jail, with a minimum of four years, after she pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing injury and failing to stop at an accident.
Mr Ashby, a former triathlete, was on a training ride when he was hit head on by Stewart who was driving down the wrong side of the road. Thirty-six-year-old Mr Ashby was thrown from his bike and left with devastating injuries.
Stewart didn’t stop to help him, instead choosing to flee to a friend’s home where she hid the car and told people she had hit a kangaroo.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Mr Ashby said the “nightmare” incident had changed his life forever, reported The Herald Sun.
“I will never recover from this. In time, I will be forced to find a new normal,” he said.
“Every single day I am reminded.”
Passers-by stopped to help Mr Ashby, who is a father-of-two, but he was so badly injured he was in a coma for several weeks and spent months in hospital.
Doctors later said the injuries were so severe it was his fitness that helped keep him alive.
Just over a year after being injured he still can’t walk properly and has lost the full use of one of his hands.
Online Source: The News
