Photo: RNZ / Ashleigh McCaull
A man who killed a Ministry of Health worker in a hit-and-run near Te Papa has been sentenced to four years and four months in prison.
Jason Tuitama, 24, was driving drunk and at excessive speed when he hit 28-year-old mother Casidhe Maguire in June 2023.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and three other charges in March and was sentenced in the Wellington High Court on Friday.
Justice Andru Isac said during sentencing that before the fatal crash on 17 June Tuitama, who was a rugby player, had been celebrating at the Johnsonville Rugby Club and had been drinking.
He said an alcohol reading after the crash found 993 micrograms of alcohol per litre of breath.
"You were almost four times the legal limit."
Tuitama's journey into Wellington was tracked by CCTV, with speeds of up to 150km/h recorded.
Turning off at Aotea Quay, he ran a red light, did not slow for a pedestrian and drove up to 115 km/h in a 50km area.
"By this stage, your partner was pleading with you to slow down and stop, you ignored her," Isac said.
Tuitama did slow down for a police checkpoint as well as for the fixed speed camera on Ngauranga Gorge.
"You could see very well what you were driving past and how you were driving the suit," Isac said.
Near Circa Theatre, he ran another red light, another vehicle narrowly missing him, before he struck Casidhe Maguire and Natasha Tanuvasa, propelling them into the air.
"Rather than stopping to assist the people you'd run down, you drove away from the scene, leaving your victims critically injured on the road," Isac said.
Police later stopped Tuitama on Evans Bay Parade, where he acknowledged what he had done.
Maguire was taken to the Intensive Care Unit but died 18 days later in Wellington Regional Hospital. Tanuvasa was hospitalised for three weeks.
Isac said prior to the accident Tuitama had showed a pattern of driving behaviour that was "consistently indifferent to the law and the safety of others".
Between February and April of 2023 Tuitama had been suspended from driving, stopped for speed twice, charged for driving while suspended and suspended from driving again as a result of excess demerit points.
He was also required to wear corrective lenses while driving, but was not on the night of the accident.
A number of friends and family gave victim impact statements at the sentencing.
Maguire's partner, Luke Harper, and now sole parent to their two-year-old son Hendricks, said the family had lost its glue.
Her father, Paul Maguire, said he had been at the hospital for his daughter's birth, then her death 28 years later, and there was no pain worse than losing a child.
Tanuvasa said she still found it hard to believe their chance meet-up could end up so deadly.
Tuitama was sentenced to four years and four months in jail, disqualified from driving for four years upon his release and ordered to pay $15,000 in reparation for emotional harm.
