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Joseph Giovanni Booker pleaded guilty to reckless driving causing injury after crashing into a truck in Manurewa.
His partner suffered severe injuries, including a collapsed lung and spinal fractures.
Booker, initially charged with attempted murder, will be sentenced in May.
While drink driving through South Auckland last year en route to a birthday party, Joseph Giovanni Booker argued with his partner as she announced her intention to end what had been a brief but volatile relationship.
His response was to speed up his Honda Civic and make an announcement of his own: that he would kill them both.
Booker, 24, nearly made good on the threat a short time later, crashing with “significant force” into a large stationary truck at the end of a Manurewa cul-de-sac. His passenger survived but suffered a collapsed lung, a protruding eyeball, spinal fractures and a gruesome “degloving” injury to her forehead as she smashed into the interior windshield.
Details of the case can now be revealed after Booker, who was initially charged with attempted murder, pleaded guilty this week to a reduced charge of reckless driving causing injury.
The Kaitaia, Far North resident also pleaded guilty to drink driving as he appeared in the High Court at Auckland before Justice Mathew Downs.
Court documents state Booker had been dating the 23-year-old for about five months when they started arguing again at her family’s Manurewa home on August 3 last year.
Joseph Booker, who was initially charged with the attempted murder of his partner, appears in the High Court at Auckland while pleading guilty to a reduced charge. Photo / Michael Craig
Police had already responded to three family harm reports between the two in the previous months, including an incident in June that resulted in charges against his partner. The two were no longer allowed to be near each other, as per the woman’s bail conditions.
The two were both drunk that day as they argued, according to the agreed summary of facts for the case.
Booker at one point was told by a family member of the woman to leave the home after the defendant punched a hole in the wall. But the woman followed and the arguing continued even after he tried, unsuccessfully, to leave without her, documents state.
The two eventually left together for a party on the North Shore that had been planned for the woman’s brother. But they never made it out of Manurewa.
“He was driving above the speed limit and was affected by the alcohol he had consumed earlier in the evening,” the summary of facts states. “[Booker’s partner] told him that she was going to leave him, and that she didn’t care if they went to the birthday party.
“The defendant then accelerated further. [She] told him to slow down. In response, he said that he was going to ‘kill [them] both’.”
He then pulled onto Adams Rd and drove directly into an Isuzu truck at the end of the short cul-de-sac.
Joseph Booker was charged with attempted murder after a crash at the end of the Adams Rd cul-de-sac in Manurewa. Photo / Google
He applied the brakes moments before smashing into the other vehicle but it was too late.
His partner, who had been sitting in the back of the vehicle without a seatbelt, was thrown into the windscreen as her side of the car crumpled upon impact.
Both spent the next nine days in hospital. Booker required surgery six days after the incident for a fractured arm. His partner’s list of injuries, however, was far more extensive.
It included the injuries to her lung, eye and vertebrae as well as broken ribs, multiple cuts to her face and the forehead degloving, described as when the top layer of skin rips from the underlying muscle and tissue.
When an officer spoke to him the next day at Middlemore Hospital, Booker estimated he had been going 80 or 90km/h at the time of the crash. He was asked what his intent had been.
“Just crash and that’s all,” he responded, adding that he tried to put his foot on the brake but couldn’t slow down.
Three days later, as he spoke to a doctor, his explanation changed. He said it had been an accident caused in part by his intoxication and denied trying to harm himself or his passenger.
Ten days after that, after he had been released from the hospital, he sat down for a recorded interview with police. This time he said he hadn’t been drunk that day, having consumed only two cans of alcohol. His partner was leaning forward over the middle console to argue with him, he said, when he noticed the truck and tried unsuccessfully to stop.
“When Detective [Mitchell] Keen asked what was going through the defendant’s head, the defendant stated that he was mad because they argued, and that he was not thinking straight,” documents state. “He realised they were going too fast, but he tried to brake. His speed was ‘not too fast’, although he accepted he was driving beyond the speed limit, although at only approximately 70km/h.”
The detective then reminded him of what he had said during the first interview the day after the crash.
“He accepted that he had had enough of the argument; he saw the parked truck; and that he just wanted to crash,” documents state.
“I probably was trying to crash,” he was recorded telling police, adding that he “definitely didn’t want to hurt anyone”.
Had he been found guilty of attempted murder, Booker would have faced a sentence of up to 14 years' imprisonment. Reckless driving causing injury carries a maximum possible punishment of five years' imprisonment and a fine of up to $20,000, while drink driving is punishable by up to three months' imprisonment.
A blood test found him to have 82 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80.
A sentencing hearing has been set for May.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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