Waikato woman drove high on meth with kids in the car, killed beloved 80-year-old

"I won't be home late tonight," Raymond Mathews said to his wife, Marie, as he shot out the door to join his mates at golf in Ngāruawāhia on the morning of 9 August, last year.

The 80-year-old hopped in his Hyundai and began the approximate 11km trip from his Rototuna, Hamilton home.

Around the same time, Vanessa Helen Railey jumped in her car and pulled away from her house. She was travelling with kids in her car.

It would not be long before their two worlds met in the most tragic circumstances.

A camera on the Horotiu Bridge Rd, about 3km before the golf club, showed Railey's vehicle travelling 34 seconds behind Mathews.

Arriving at the turn-off to the club, Mathews pulled to the middle of the road, turned on his blinker, and waited for oncoming traffic before turning right.

He never made it.

Instead, the 37-year-old Railey ploughed straight into the back of him at full speed.

There were no brake marks.

Mathews' vehicle was hit with such force it was shunted 83m down the road into a ditch.

His golf buddies were in the carpark, waiting for him. They heard the unmistakable sound of a crash and ran to the scene, where they discovered it was their mate involved.

Golf was cancelled, and they went inside the clubhouse for a drink in their friend's honour instead.

Mathews died of his injuries nine days later.

Analysis of Railey's blood found it was five times the tolerance limit of meth at 50ng/ml, and three times over the cannabis tolerance at 3ng/ml.

Railey told police she saw Mathews's vehicle as she approached and thought she had enough space to go around him.

She initially denied having taken any drugs and could not explain her high drug readings.

'You killed my father'

This week, Railey appeared in the Hamilton District Court for sentencing on charges of drug driving causing death and injury. She sat emotionless throughout the marathon hearing.

Mathews' daughter, Lisa, told Railey she'd been waiting one year and four months to speak to her, to outline the "utter devastation and heartbreak" her actions had caused.

"I really struggle with the word accident. Vanessa didn't accidentally consume methamphetamine, nor did she accidentally smoke cannabis.

"It was not an accident that she got into her car... yet you chose to do drugs, you chose to drive under the influence.

"Your actions were deliberate, utterly stupid, and selfish.

"I hope that every day for the rest of your life you are reminded of the pain and devastation you have caused."

She also spoke of how active her father was. He mowed up to 30 lawns and played three rounds of golf a week.

Lisa added he would be "gutted" to know he'd been killed by a drug-driver given he worked 43 years as a sales rep, travelling up to 50,000km a year, and not once been involved in a crash.

'Her drug use is contradictory'

Before counsel Gerard Walsh got a chance to speak, Judge Philip Crayton told him Railey's explanation about how much, and when, she consumed drugs before the crash "just couldn't be true".

Railey told two separate report writers that she'd smoked "two puffs" of meth two nights prior, and smoked cannabis the night before.

"Walsh you know that doesn't stack up, everyone here knows that doesn't stack up... it's just absolute rubbish."

Judge Crayton adjourned the case briefly so Walsh could talk to his client to see if she could refresh her memory.

Walsh returned to tell the judge she accepted drug use was a daily occurrence at that point and drug tests "speak for themselves".

He added that she was genuinely remorseful and did want to attend a restorative justice conference but it was declined.

"She is so, so sorry. Whatever she says cannot bring people back and cannot undo the harm that has been done."

Her "addiction was ruling" at the time of the crash, but she was currently in the "early days" of turning a corner on that, as she had begun taking rehabilitative courses.

He pushed for the judge to hand down a home detention sentence.

'She's not remorseful'

Crown solicitor Kasey Dillon told the judge given the lengths he had to go to get Railey to accept her drug-driving culpability during the hearing, she was not genuinely remorseful.

"Two puffs a couple of nights before? I do not accept that you can ascribe the remorse as genuine in this case."

Dillon suggested the judge hand down a short jail term instead of converting it to home detention, if he got below two years.

'This should be a life-changing event'

As he began to deliver his decision, Judge Crayton explained he could not find any case law in a case like this where an offender who was sentenced to less than two years did not get it converted to home detention.

He then told Railey that if she didn't "allow this event to be a transformative and life-changing event for you then you will not... have shown what I would call true remorse for your actions".

"This should be a life-changing event for you because you took somebody's life.

"You have affected all these people by your choices, by your decisions.

"It should be a turning point and if this isn't, I do not know what it would take."

Judge Crayton said she should have admitted her drug use a lot earlier.

"To be blunt with you, that should not have been a difficult concession given your description of drug misuse and drug use given to various report writers."

She knew she was high on drugs at the time but had struggled to accept it, he said.

"There is no escaping it. It wasn't your driving, it was your decision to drive when you were in that state."

He accepted Dillon's submission about remorse and declined to issue any discount given the "deceptive nature" to which she recounted her drug use to report writers.

After taking a starting point of three years and eight months' jail, and applying various discounts, he got down to two years' prison.

He agreed to convert that to 12 months of home detention with conditions banning drugs and alcohol and urged her to take part in driving courses including the Right Track programme.

Judge Crayton also disqualified her from driving for three years and ordered her to pay reparation of $400 to cover the insurance excess, and costs of $1784.77.

'We knew she wouldn't get jail'

Speaking to NZME outside court, Mathews' daughter Kim said they knew Railey would never go to jail.

"Right from the get-go we've had little faith in the justice system and we knew that she wouldn't get anywhere near what we wanted.

"We wanted to see her go to prison, even if for a short amount of time to give her some solitude to think about how she lives her life."

As for attending a restorative justice conference, Kim felt she only wanted to do it for the discount.

"Not once has she ever made any effort to apologise to us. We've had nothing."

Barry Mathews noticed how Railey sat stoically in the dock throughout proceedings, not showing any emotion.

The fact she got a speeding ticket the day after the fatal crash also showed a lack of insight and only fuelled the family's cynicism about her ability to remain drug-free, he said.

- This article first appeared in the New Zealand Herald.

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