Just hours after his friend was found dead on an Owaka road Garth McLachlan’s lies began.
The 53-year-old had been drinking at a party to mark the opening of duck-shooting season along with the victim Rikki Robin Lindsay McCall, 33, in May 2022, the Dunedin District Court heard yesterday.
As people left the gathering in the early hours, the man’s "mangled" body was found in Owaka Valley Rd and it soon became clear to police he had been struck by a vehicle.
But it could not have been McLachlan, according to his own version of events to police the next day.
He had left the property a couple of hours before Mr McCall, had avoided Owaka Valley Rd and would have been tucked up in bed at the time of his death.
"If I was responsible I would’ve owned up to it," he told the Dunedin District Court during a hearing in February last year when the case looked set for trial.
"I wouldn’t have driven the tractor at the funeral or been there every day to help at the farm [if guilty]."
Yesterday, though, the depth of McLachlan’s deceit was exposed.
The victim’s wife Rachel — who was widowed on her birthday — said she was "disgusted" by the defendant’s behaviour in the days following the death, as he appeared to share the family’s grief.
"You drove him to his own funeral with his children sitting each side of you in the cab [of a tractor]," she said.
"You sat at the graveside and watched, less than a metre away, as Rikki’s loved ones buried him, shovel by shovel. You made a mockery of his funeral."
"The lies, deceit, selfishness and betrayal — what a gutless coward," she said.
On May 7, 2022, McLachlan and Mr McCall were socialising with a large group at a property known as the "Duck Dorm".
Though the defendant originally claimed he had not spoken to the victim, it was yet another detail in his story which changed during interviews with police.
About midnight, Mr McCall left the property on foot, shortly followed by McLachlan who headed home in his Ford Courier.
Police inquiries and a pathologist’s report concluded the victim had been hit while lying in the eastbound lane.
McLachlan later told police he had felt "a bit of a bump" but continued home, claiming he was unaware it was Mr McCall.
Just minutes afterwards, the victim’s friends found him.
The holes in McLachlan’s story quickly began to show; witness statements put him at the Duck Dorm at midnight, two hours after he supposedly went home.
Ten days after the incident, police seized the defendant’s ute, phone and clothes and hauled him to the station for another chat.
While McLachlan admitted making “mistakes” in his first statement, he maintained his innocence.
He was the one behind the wheel.
“It’s something I never wanted to happen. It’s destroyed my whole life now; it’s destroyed my relationships in Owaka and my farming career,” McLachlan told police.
Despite his disclosures, he pleaded not guilty to the charge and maintained his position for more than a year.
He argued that his final, revelatory interview with police should be withheld from a jury because of a discussion with a police officer that occurred off camera.
That was firmly knocked back by Judge David Robinson but it was months after the Court of Appeal declined to intervene that McLachlan pleaded guilty to failing to stop and ascertain injury.
Counsel Cate Andersen said her client had lost everything as a result of his crime and she urged the court to impose a term of home detention.
Judge Robinson, however, said that would not adequately denounce McLachlan’s conduct or hold him accountable for the pain he had caused.
The only reasonable inference to be drawn from his failure to stop after hitting the victim was that he was concerned about his state of intoxication, Judge Robinson said.
McLachlan was jailed for a year.
