Sentence unchanged after fatal crash that killed Albury man

Luke Thomas Elphick was sentenced in Wagga District Court in January after pleading guilty to dangerous driving occasioning death and dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm.

The charges followed a crash at the intersection of the Hume Highway and the Old Hume Highway at Tumblong on August 24, 2019, that killed 60-year-old Albury man Paul Sinclair and injured his wife, Gail.

Elphick, then aged 31, had been driving his Toyota HiLux ute along the Old Hume Highway when it collided with a four-wheel-drive towing a camper trailer, which was being driven by Mr Sinclair.

Elphick argued the sentence was manifestly excessive, that judge Gordon Lerve incorrectly assessed his moral culpability, and failed to assess an application for the sentence to be served as an intensive corrections order.

Before sentencing, Elphick submitted that his "momentary inattention" on a country road that led to the crash did not meet the level of moral culpability as the same inattention on a busy urban freeway.

Following a Supreme Court hearing earlier this month, Judge of Appeal John Basten and justices Christine Adamson and Michael Walton on Wednesday upheld the District Court's sentence.

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"Just how the applicant came to drive into the side of the vehicle in which the victims were travelling is difficult to comprehend," Judge Basten stated in his decision.

"However, making every allowance for the good character of the applicant, that difficulty does not reduce his culpability.

"There was no error of principle or fact in the careful reasoning of the sentencing judge."

The Supreme Court found that an intensive corrections order was not applicable to the case and Judge Lerve had been open to imposing a sentence of three years' jail with a non-parole period of two years.

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