Drink driver ordered to sell flat

David Cashman (left) and Jonathan Keogh.

A repeat drink-driver will have to sell his home to pay $47,845 to the family of the man he killed.

David Graham Cashman, 66, was jailed for three years and ordered to pay $8000 each to the mother, father, two sisters and brother of Jonathan Keogh when he appeared in the Christchurch District Court yesterday.

He will also have to pay the family $7845 for the cost of the funeral and flying the brother to New Zealand for it.

Cashman has already sold his home and bought a cheaper flat in Christchurch because a degenerative bone disease meant he could no longer live outside the city.

That meant he had $15,000 in the bank, which he offered as reparations to the Keogh family.

But it will not go close to covering the reparations Judge Stephen Erber ordered at his sentencing.

"You will have to sell your house. That's too bad," Judge Erber told the downcast figure, who had set down his crutches to stand leaning on the side of the dock during the long sentencing.

Cashman had three previous convictions for drink-driving before drinking whisky at home and then going out for dinner on Mothers' Day.

Driving home in bad weather he lost control of his car while passing another vehicle and struck the car Mr Keogh was driving head-on.

Mr Keogh, 28, died at the scene on Main South Rd near Templeton on his way back from visiting his own mother in Dunedin.

In court yesterday his sister, Megan McPherson, wondered how Cashman had missed the message that drink-driving ruined lives.

"Has he been living in a cave?" she asked as she read the family's victim impact statement to the court.

"Forgiveness can never be contemplated."

Cashman's three-year sentence carries a minimum non-parole term of two years. He was given a reduced sentence for his early plea of guilty.

Mrs McPherson said the family were forced to face living without Mr Keogh. Family members had suffered from depression, lost weight, found themselves unexpectedly crying in public, and had taken sleeping pills.

The family wondered how Cashman kept being given his licence back after his offending.

He seemed to have been "in training for this tragedy".

Defence counsel David Stringer said Cashman was ashamed and felt awful.

His four drink-driving offences had been spread over 36 years. He did not often go out, usually drank at home where he lived with his partner, and had now decided to give up alcohol.

He had a degenerative bone disease which meant he sometimes wore a neck brace and used crutches.

Mr Stringer said outside court the reparation order would leave his client with virtually nothing.

"No amount of money paid is going to bring [Mr Keogh] back. What it effectively is going to do is destroy Mr Cashman for no great benefit to the Keogh family.

"It's destroying one man because he destroyed someone else."

Judge Erber disqualified Cashman from driving for 10 years, telling him: "You are a real and present peril when you get into a car."

- NZPA, STAFF REPORTER