KEY POINTS:
A teenager who caused a crash in a stolen Mercedes which killed two people was today given the harshest sentence a Youth Court can impose - just three months supervision.
The youth was fleeing police when the stolen car he was driving on State Highway 1 at Dome Valley, north of Auckland, crashed head-on into a Toyota Rav on October 3 last year.
Two passengers, including a hitchhiker, were killed. Two others were seriously injured.
Appearing in the North Shore Youth Court, the 16-year-old boy who cannot be named was sentenced to three months supervision in a residential premises.
He was also given six months supervision following that, with a "tracker" - someone he was told would "keep an eye on you".
"There's nothing more severe in the Youth Court," Judge Laurence Ryan said.
The boy was sentenced for four charges of theft, two counts of burglary, three counts of unlawfully interfering with a motor vehicle and three of stealing motor vehicles.
There were a further two counts of dangerous driving causing death and two counts of dangerous driving causing injury. He also faced a charge of being an unlicensed driver.
Judge Ryan said: "I would have sent you to prison if I could have, but I can't."
However, the judge also said the teenager's social welfare report was one of the best he had seen, although he noted the teenager had been moved back into a secure youth institution because he had broken the rules.
He also said the teenager first came to the notice of social welfare workers when he was two and had embarked on a criminal life five years ago. Last year he faced 43 motor vehicle, burglary and theft charges.
His offending got worse and worse and he was "totally out of control," the judge said.
He was remorseful and wanted to apologise, said the judge, but the youth said nothing when given the chance in court today.
His mother and father could not prevent his offending but wanted him to live with either of them. However, the judge said that carried a huge risk he could "carry on down the track you were on before".
Outside the court the teenager's mother would not talk about fatal crash or her son's sentence.
A woman who survived the horror road crash said the guilty teen driver got off lightly.
Karen McGregor-Dawson said three months in custody followed by six months of supervision was not enough for two lives and serious injuries to two others, including herself.
Ms McGregor-Dawson was driving her Toyota RAV 4 north as the teen drove the Mercedes south on the wrong side of the road last October.
Ms McGregor-Dawson tried to avoid a crash but the Mercedes slammed into the passenger side of the RAV4, forcing the vehicle back onto the bonnet of a car behind.
Ms McGregor-Dawson, who gets married next week, broke her left femur, right wrist and collar bone, lacerated her right knee and both feet and badly cut and bruised her face.
Before she left court to go to hospital for more treatment, she said the teen driver came from a dysfunctional family.
"I don't think it was adequate for the offence that was committed but given the current legislation for youth offending there was not much else the judge could have done.
"The judge has done the best he could in the circumstances but most people would agree that for the loss of two lives and two serious injuries, three months in custody followed by six months supervision is really not adequate."
She said although the court was told today the teen driver was remorseful and apologetic, she had received no apology from him.
She said as a Christian with a strong faith in God she was now getting on with her life.
"I am just pleased to put it behind me," she said.
- NZHERALD STAFF, NZPA
