The 22-year-old, who was granted interim name suppression, appeared before Judge Bernadette Farnan in the Invercargill District Court yesterday charged with failing to stop and ascertain injury after an accident.
The charge sheet says the offence occurred at Otatara on September 25.
Mr Phillips (19) sustained severe injuries after being struck by a car in Marama Ave South, while walking home from a work party and was in an induced coma for five days after the accident.
After requests and police releasing CCTV footage of the vehicle believed to have been the one driven at the time of the accident, the driver turned himself in to police on September 29.
Yesterday, Judge Farnan took the man’s guilty plea but did not enter a conviction.
She gave him leave to apply for the Right Track programme which is often used as a diversionary sentence.
If completed, a conviction often does not get entered, meaning a person avoids it being added to their criminal history.
Judge Farnan remanded the man on bail to appear next June.
