A man awaiting sentence for a home invasion murder has been jailed for at least five years for causing the death of a pregnant woman in a high-speed crash.
Jeremy Josh Garvey was driving a stolen Subaru WRX when he clipped a garden bed on the Pacific Highway at Charlestown in Newcastle, lost control and crashed into a service station and a parked car in September 2018.
The speeding disqualified driver’s friend and back seat passenger, Kiera Forster, also known as Kiera Barrett, was placed in an induced coma before dying weeks later.
The 32-year-old was 19 or 20 weeks’ pregnant, Judge Roy Ellis said on Friday in the NSW District Court in Newcastle.
“The fetus was viable after the collision but not after her death.”
Garvey, 26, admitted a string of charges including aggravated dangerous driving causing death and possessing a shortened firearm found in the Subaru.
He was found to have methamphetamine in his system.
The judge jailed him for eight years and six months, with a non-parole period of five years.
Before his arrest months after the crash, Garvey and two other men invaded the Whitebridge home of small-time drug dealer Philip Steele.
The 60-year-old cement renderer was repeatedly stabbed when the masked-and-gloved men, armed with a machete and baseball bat, attacked him in the early hours of December 17, 2018.
Mr Steele suffered 23 wounds and 28 blunt force injuries.
Garvey, who has pleaded guilty to the murder, is due to be sentenced in the Supreme Court on 26 August.
Judge Ellis said Garvey had a history of driving, violence, dishonesty and other offences.
Just before the crash he had been facing a red light when he veered around a truck, lost control, mounted the kerb and became airborne.
His driving had involved a clear abandonment of his responsibility to other people, the judge said.
Garvey told a psychiatrist he struggled to cope with causing the death of his friend of about 10 years, describing her to be just “like a little sister” and felt guilty he had survived the crash.
“I accept Mr Garvey has expressed genuine remorse and contrition for the loss of her life,” the judge said.
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