Agony of a devastated killer

Masterton mother Tracy Kent began her first day of home detention yesterday for killing a man while driving drunk. Her tears come, she says, whenever she is alone. Kent, 38, was sentenced in the Wellington District Court on Monday to 12 months' home detention after pleading guilty to driving three times over the legal limit and causing the death of Dial-A-Driver James Lee, 76, in Wellington in December.
Kent told the Times-Age yesterday that she was grateful to escape ''probably two years'' in jail and believed fair the sentence of Judge Ian Mill, who also ordered her to pay reparation of $30,000 to Mr Lee's widow, Marian Lee-Hesper. Kent was ordered to complete 200 hours of community service and was disqualified from driving for five years.
''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 said yesterday.
''I'm just devastated I can't do anything else for her. I took her husband away from her and it absolutely eats away at me _ it really does. Now I have my son I know the powerful love you can feel for someone else and can imagine if they are taken away by someone else.
''I feel so much compassion and love for Mrs Lee-Hesper and so much shame and horror at what I've done,'' she said.
Judge Mill said at sentencing that Kent had escaped prison by the narrowest of margins. He accepted an enforced separation would risk damaging her son, who was unusually dependent on his mother, and in mitigation accepted also the personal and mental difficulties Kent was suffering at the time of the crash, her early guilty plea and her remorse. The court was earlier told Kent had been drinking all night when she pulled out of the Te Papa museum carpark just after 2am on December 23, driving the wrong way down a one way system without her lights on. She then collided head-on with the vehicle Mr Lee was driving. Kent was found to have been driving with 259 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80mg per 100ml.
Mr Lee died on December 30 of injuries and a passenger in the vehicle he was driving, Ricky Waitere, was injured.
Kent said she had requested a restorative justice meeting with Mr Lee's widow that did not eventuate, but ''Mr 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,'' Kent said yesterday. ''I wasn't told for days afterwards that Mr Lee had died. It was the blackest moment of my life when I heard. It swallowed me whole.'' The home-detention term is the maximum 12 months allowable and Kent's electronic leash was fitted on Monday night. The device allows her to move only within the boundaries of the Masterton home which she moved to with her son in March. Kent, who may now be forced to abandon her study of herbal medicine, said she used equity in her Eketahuna home and offered as much reparation as she was able to muster.
''I had to leave Eketahuna to qualify for home detention _ and I would do anything to make things right. If there was more, I would give it. She [Mrs Lee-Hesper] is finding things really hard without her husband's income and I hope the reparation helps at least a little. ''I don't expect to be forgiven, ever, but I hope I can make good wherever and for whoever I can. I haven't had a drink since the accident and don't intend to ever drink again. But that's just the beginning.''
Mrs Lee-Hesper, who was married to Mr Lee for 47 years, told a Wellington newspaper on Monday she believed the sentence was fair and ''it does not need to be that the child is punished as well''. She remains unable to forgive Kent.