THE 27-year-old Hampton Park man who had drugs and alcohol in his system when he killed Poowong teenager Noah Peacock in a car crash on the South Gippsland Highway at Jeetho on August 11, 2022, is set to be spared the harshest penalty such actions might incur.

Instead of the much more serious charge of culpable driving causing death, with a maximum penalty in Victoria of 20 years, Jayden Tyler Colverd pleaded guilty in the Melbourne County Court last Friday to the lesser but still serious charges of:

1. Dangerous driving causing death, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment; and

2. Failing to render assistance, which also carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.

A key factor in the decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to pursue a culpable driving charge was that while the collision happened at about 4.20pm on Thursday, August 11, it wasn’t until 7.07pm that night, in hospital in Melbourne, that a blood sample was finally taken for analysis.

By then Colverd’s blood alcohol concentration was 0.01 per 100ml, estimated to have been between 0.037 and 0.064 at the time of the collision, with 9ng/mL of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (also known as THC) also in his system, estimated to have been higher at the time of the crash by an expert witness, Dr Jason Schreiber of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.

During his summary of the incident for the court last Friday, Prosecution Counsel Ben Kerlin said it was “due to his injuries” that Colverd wasn’t subjected to a preliminary breath test at the scene.

This was despite the fact that he’d run away from the collision, down an embankment, through blackberry bushes and out of sight and wasn’t located by police until 4.50pm, upwards of 20 minutes later, walking along the shoulder of Jeetho Road.

It hasn’t been clearly established why Colverd ran, beyond his own claims after the crash that “he needed some air” and his defence counsel’s submission that his client, a disqualified driver with priors for leaving the scene of an accident, had likely panicked.

Colverd was returned to the scene by police, subsequently placed on a stretcher and flown to the Royal Melbourne Hospital for treatment.

While defence counsel for Colverd, John Moore, said it wasn’t disputed that his client had consumed alcohol on the day of the offence, it was disputed that he had taken drugs on that day.

In order to prove the offender was driving ‘culpably’ prosecutors would have had to establish beyond reasonable doubt that the offender was so affected by THC that he was incapable of properly controlling a motor vehicle.

While the prosecution and the defence agreed that the circumstances supported the charge of ‘dangerous driving causing death’, the case lacked the evidence to support the more serious charge, that the collision was due to THC intoxication, as opposed to a decision to engage in risk-taking behaviour.

The court adjourned, following the reading of victim impact statements by Noah Peacock’s mother Michelle, his brother Jake, aunt Lisa Jenkin, a work colleague and a friend. Noah’s father Jason also submitted a victim’s statement to the court.

Judge Nola Karapanagiotidis will deliver her finding and hand down a sentence in the County Court of Victoria (Melbourne) on Wednesday, October 23 at 9.30am.

Colverd was remanded in custody, having already served 778 days of an expected future sentence.

Mother confronts son’s killer

A harrowing feature of last Friday’s hearing, in the Melbourne County Court, was the reading of her victim’s impact statement, by Noah’s mother, Michelle Peacock, before Judge Karapanagiotidis, and in front of her family and friends, the accused man seated in the dock immediately behind the public gallery, and his family.

“To anyone who has lost a loved one to try and put it into words is heartbreaking, to relive the pain of going on without your loved one who has now gone forever is horrific and the pain is like nothing else.

“It’s a constant ache that is always there, a broken heart is real and will never go away, how and why did this happen to us? It hurts to listen to the judicial process and it makes me feel no one is placing a high enough importance on Noah and the fact he is gone. I feel empty and I can’t find words or possibly describe to anyone the dull ache I live daily.

“I will always think of the night of August 11, 2022 as the night that changed my life forever. It hurts like it was yesterday to remember and relive the events of that evening and to relive, in order to write this statement, has been extremely hard and emotional.

“Remembering my life before that night and comparing it to my life today and going forward has especially been painful. One of my children, my world is missing, and my heart will forever be broken and my life and the lives of my family will never ever be the same again.

“All I ever wanted was to have children, to have them young enough so that I could enjoy them and grow old with them.”

Michelle went on to say that the birth of her oldest, Jake in 2000, was followed by Noah on February 25, 2003, and Bailey on February 23, 2006, on either side of her own birthday on February 24 – three cakes, three celebrations in-a-row, now gone forever.

“We clearly didn’t plan too well. It wasn’t until Noah and Bailey got older that we realised, Bailey will turn 18 and two days later Noah will turn 21, what a huge weekend that was going to be.”

A caring, compassionate, loyal and considerate boy, Michelle said Noah had the world at his feet at 19 years of age, in his second year as an apprentice glazier, having just made his senior football debut for the Poowong Magpies and with an extremely close group of mates who did everything together.

Michelle recalled her last phone call from Noah, and the call she received from a friend of Noah’s saying there had been a terrible accident on the highway and knowing before she left home and arrived at the scene that her beautiful boy was gone.

The incident has affected everything from her own health, to anxiety levels when other family members are away and her place in the local community.

“I could write forever about our beautiful boy Noah, but nothing can do him justice or take away our life sentence of pain and loss.”

Summary of the incident

The incident occurred at about 4.20pm on Thursday August 11, 2022 when a vehicle driven by the offender failed to negotiate a left turn on the South Gippsland Highway at Jeetho, between Loch and Bena, and crossed onto the wrong side of the highway, hitting with a vehicle being driven by Noah Peacock. The defendant was 25 years of age at the time and lived with his mother. He was unlicensed, having had his license cancelled and disqualified from driving on February 18, 2022 for a period of two years. The victim Noah Peacock was 19 years old at the time of the collision. The

South Gippsland Highway, at the location is a two-way, single-lane rural road separated by double white lines. Both sides of the road are grassed, the road was wet, but the sun was out and visibility was good. The road was in good condition.

Noah was driving a silver 2005 Ford Falcon sedan, travelling in a northwest redirection, a talented Junior footballer, he was on his way to football training. He was driving on the correct side of road.

The defendant was driving a 2004 Falcon station wagon in a south-easterly direction, the car registered in his mother’s name.

A witness to the incident, Eleanor Biro, was also driving in a south-easterly direction at about 4.20pm, just past the town of Loch, at 100km/h, when her car approached an overtaking lane at a rise in the road. She looked in her rear-vision mirror and saw the offender’s car approaching her quickly from behind. The car was travelling much faster than she was. She explained it as going “like a rocket”, causing her to slow her speed and pull over but concerned by how fast the offender was travelling because they were both approaching the overtaking lane. The offender overtook her closely by the overtaking lane and was gone in a flash.

She indicated she believed it was going too fast for the road conditions. Ms Biro continued driving and followed the road around a left bend, lost sight of the car for a brief moment and then came upon the accident scene.

The white station wagon driven by the defendant had crossed over double lines and hit the silver car being driven by Noah head-on. The station wagon had come to rest on the opposite side of the road and was blocking traffic travelling in both directions. The silver car had been pushed by the force to the side and was fully alight by the time Ms Biro and other witnesses stopped at the scene.

In the summary read for the court, the defendant exited his car and ran from the scene. It was also suggested that the man’s dog had jumped into his lap, distracting him just before the collision, although this was not used by the defence as mitigation for the crash.