Hunter Valley mother who fell asleep at the wheel jailed over crash that killed daughter
A 22-year-old mother who fell asleep at the wheel has been jailed for a maximum of three years over a crash that killed her two-year-old daughter.
During her sentencing at the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney on Thursday, Judge Norman Delaney described Tori Alice Shipman's life as a tragic.
Shipman was asleep at the wheel when she crashed near Muswellbrook in the NSW Hunter Valley after a 380 kilometre journey.
She has been jailed for a minimum of 17 months, but Judge Delaney said had the victim not been her own daughter, it would have been significantly more.
Her daughter Jannali had been in the back of the car but had climbed into the front because she wanted to be beside her mother.
On impact, the two-year-old was thrown nearly 22 metres and killed.
When paramedics arrived at the scene of the crash Shipman screamed to them "hysterically" that she could not find her eldest child, Judge Delaney said.
The young mother had been a chronic cannabis user since the age of 14 and had later begun using the drug ice.
Judge Delaney said Shipman made admissions which were against her own interest including talking about her fatigue and drug issues, which the police would not have known about otherwise.
He said the drug ice had made Shipman feel "like nothing in the world mattered" which was tragically understandable after what he described as her traumatic childhood.
Shipman was slightly drug impaired at the time of the crash and was also driving on a suspended learner's licence.
Judge Delaney told the court he had practiced law for 26 years and had overseen thousands of cases of personal injuries.
He described this case in the top one percent of the worst tragedies he had ever encountered.
Kat Armstrong, a spokeswoman for Shipman's family, told reporters in front of the court today that the family would never get over the death of the child.
"No jail sentence, no matter how long it is, how do you get over losing your two and half year old daughter," Ms Armstrong said.
