A young driver killed her younger sister in a car crash and is hoping to work as a nurse in a bid to make amends for the shocking act which “shattered her world”.
Nikkita-Lee Wells from Narre Warren was 17 when she died in the horror crash on Stud Rd at Rowville in February 2019.
Her older sister, 23-year-old Mikayla, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death in Victoria’s County Court on Wednesday.
At the time of the crash, Wells was driving a white sedan with her sister in the back and a friend in the front passenger seat that morning.
Two men were driving “faster than other traffic” in a bus lane and the young woman merged from the centre lane into the bus lane, according to court documents.
The rear passenger side door of Wells crashed into the driver’s side door and panel of another car at about 82 km per hour.
Both cars veered off the road, onto a grass verge and Wells’ car split in two when it crashed into a power pole, according the prosecution summary.
The back half of the young woman’s car was thrown across the road and Nikkita Wells died at the scene.
Before the fatal crash, she also steered her car from the right-hand lane on Stud Rd into the centre lane very close to another driver, who “backed off” because of the manoeuvre.
When police interviewed Wells she told them she was driving normally before the crash and saw a car behind her weaving in and out of traffic.
“I honestly think I’ve swerved,” Ms Wells told police during the interview.
Her lawyer Leighton Gwynne told the court she was seeing a therapist and was dealing with the trauma from the crash.
She was training as a nurse and was denied jobs because there was a positive criminal record check, he told the court.
“She’s going to have some difficulties pursuing that career but … wishes to make amends for what’s occurred,” Mr Gwynne said.
He asked for the young woman not to serve any jail time or have a conviction recorded against her.
During the pre-sentence hearing the judge said the case was “tragic”.
“[It was] a dreadful, tragic, short-lived error that doesn’t describe her character in any true sense,” Judge Gerard Mullaly said.
But prosecutor Neil Hutton told the court for no conviction to be recorded would be “extraordinary”.
In a moving Facebook post, Ms Wells wrote on xjmtzywthe third year anniversary of the crash her “world went dark and shattered into a million pieces”.
“I grieve what we had and all we shared, I grieve all the important things she missed and will miss, I grieve the future we were supposed to have together. I grieve the fact I’ll never see you again, having you sit with me almost every night, our late night adventures, our silly antics,” she wrote.
She is expected to be sentenced this week.
