Jeremy Lee, 44, was jailed for more than three years yesterday after he admitted a charge of dangerous driving and drug-impaired driving causing the death of 65-year-old Alan George Weir following an incident near Waimate on September 11 last year.
A woman who previously employed the defendant as a driver at her trucking firm said she was not surprised by the incident and a victim of Lee’s violence earlier warned "Jeremy will kill someone".
The former employer said Lee seemed like a "nice enough guy" and had been a truck driver his whole life.
But after about six weeks’ work, the employer reported him to police after someone tipped her off that Lee was driving her truck while high on methamphetamine.
She and her husband stopped him and got him out of the truck and never let him drive for them again.
But about four years later, in an almost identical situation, Lee killed Mr Weir.
The victim’s car was lodged under the truck — and the trailer unit on the truck Lee was driving burst into flames.
Lee and another truck driver, who stopped to help, pulled Mr Weir from his car.
CPR was administered, but Mr Weir died at the scene.
Lee was airlifted to Dunedin Hospital and a blood sample revealed 90 nanograms of methamphetamine per millilitre of blood in his system — nearly double the high-risk limit of 50ng.
Yesterday, Judge Hermann Retzlaff sentenced Lee to three years two months’ imprisonment.
Speaking to the Otago Daily Times outside court, Mr Weir’s wife, Kerri, said while she was glad the court process was over, she did not think her family would ever have a sense of closure.
"It’s sad to think that Alan’s life’s only worth, you know, three years and two months, but it wouldn’t matter what the sentence was, it wasn’t going to bring Alan back," Mrs Weir said.
"I don’t want Alan’s life to be a waste. I want him [Lee] to learn from it ... I don’t ever want to see this happen to anybody else."
She remembered her husband as a hero "because he stopped a maniac on the road, even though he didn’t do it intentionally".
Counsel Brendan Stephenson said Lee was committed to kicking his methamphetamine addiction and had reached out to a residential rehabilitation programme and engaged in counselling.
"He acknowledges this tragic event that he’s caused can’t go in vain; he needs to change," Mr Stephenson said.
The former employer said she was surprised Lee ever got another job driving, but his charm might have deceived employers.
"We wouldn’t have thought in a million years he would be this sort of a fella because he was pleasant and he looked after the trucks and he was very good.
"These guys obviously got sucked in like we did."
After she got him drug tested, it was clear Lee was "loaded to the hilt on P", the employer said.
She wished something more had been done at the time.
"We said to the police ‘he’s either going to kill himself or kill someone else and we don’t want to be involved in that’," she said.
"If he had been stopped then ... this may have been preventable, because no-one would have employed him," she said.
Police said they did not have any record of the employer’s complaint, but in general they took action to intercept impaired drivers when units were available to get offenders off the road and hold them to account.
"Obviously, nothing will be on file because they didn’t do anything about it," she said.
Lee was on parole at the time of the crash after a stint in prison for an attack on a woman.
He was released on parole after serving 18 months of his two-year, three-month sentence, but was recalled after consuming methamphetamine.
Later he was again released on conditions, including one not to consume drugs or alcohol and was subject to testing to ensure his compliance with this condition.
He was still on parole when the fatal crash occurred.
The victim of the attack that landed Lee in prison said she tried to warn authorities of the devastation Lee could cause.
"My exact words were ‘Jeremy will kill someone’," she said.
"I warned them that his narcissistic behaviour, his total disregard for law enforcement coupled with his violent temper and meth habit, was a disaster waiting to happen," she said.
"Sadly, I was right."
She wondered why Lee was not kept under closer scrutiny by his parole officer, why he was not drug tested more often and how he got another job truck driving.
A South Island Foodstuffs spokesperson said that at the time of the incident, Lee was employed by one of its former transport partners, which was no longer operating.
"Foodstuffs requires all transport partners to meet strict safety and compliance standards, including drug and alcohol testing protocols," they said.
"We regularly review our procedures to ensure they reflect industry standards and support the safety of our team members, contractors and the communities we serve."
