"Brace yourself, I f**ked up."
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According to the police fact sheet, Kale Darren Wort, of Woodstock's Myalla Road, uttered those words to his two fellow passengers moments before the vehicle he drove collided with a tree.
It was three days before Christmas last year. Wort, who would later estimate he'd consumed "five to 10 beers", was warned by witnesses not to drive.
He'd had beers after a Saturday morning shift and continued to drink in the afternoon with friends. However, he wanted food, "and drove to save their [he and the passengers'] legs," according to the police fact sheet.
"[It was] one of the dumbest decisions that I have made," Wort later wrote in a letter to the court.
As the witnesses followed, it was estimated that the Mazda Metro 121 Sedan was travelling at 80km/h in a 50 km/h zone as he headed west along Myalla Road.
"It was like he was at Bathurst," a witness said to police later: "I am surprised he didn't hit anything before hand."
As the now 22-year-old attempted to negotiate a slight left bend in the road, he lost control after hearing a noise from the driver's seat.
"I looked down, and when I looked up I swerved... about five to 10 metres then into a tree," Wort, who would later have to be extracted from the vehicle with machinery and was taken by helicopter to Orange Hospital, said to police.
One of Wort's passengers was unconscious, eventually going to Westmead Hospital after initial admission to Orange. He fractured a vertebrae, suffered multiple lacerations to the scalp and knee, and bled inside the skull, requiring further observation.
A doctor at Westmead suggested the injuries amounted "to grievous bodily harm," according to police.
The other passenger also suffered multiple lacerations, sustaining significant damage to the left knee.
Wort, whose blood sample was taken after the crash, was found to have 0.157g of alcohol in 100mL of blood. A half-empty Corona was found in the footwell on the driver's side of the vehicle.
Wort, who was also described as "extremely co-operative" by police, pled guilty to two counts of driving furiously in a motor vehicle, doing or causing bodily harm, and one count of driving with a high range PCA.
He was sentenced - at Cowra Local Court - to a two year Intensive Corrections Order, nine months of home detention with electronic monitoring, concurrent license disqualifications over a three year period, 200 hours of community service, ordered to abstain from alcohol for a month, and will complete drug and alcohol counselling until it is deemed his "attendance is no longer required."
"The focus is to keep you alive," Magistrate O'Brien said.
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