Vic: Jail for mother of six who killed teen in smash

AAP General News (Australia)
04-02-2004
Vic: Jail for mother of six who killed teen in smash

By Stuart Walsh

MELBOURNE, April 2 - A Melbourne mother of six who killed a teenage girl in an horrific
head-on car crash was today jailed for four and a half years.

The County Court heard that 53-year-old Dianne Roberta Wooster, of Edithvale, was almost
two and a half times over the legal blood alcohol limit when she took her husband's car
to buy cigarettes in the early hours of August 17, 2001.

She was driving on the wrong side of the road when she ploughed into a car being driven
by 19-year-old Elise Toniolo.

Ms Toniolo died in hospital that day.

Her passenger Paul Bowie was seriously injured.

The court heard that the previous day, Wooster had consumed six glasses of white wine
with workmates at a Cheltenham hotel.

Wooster's husband told the court that he saw her asleep on the couch at about midnight
and that he did not realise she later left the house and took his car.

Judge Thomas Neesham told Wooster: "The inescapable fact is that through your own criminal
folly you snuffed out the life of a young woman on the very threshold of adult life."

In fixing a minimum term of two years the judge said he took into account the fact
Wooster had waited more than three years to learn of her fate and that she suffered from
a psychiatric illness.

He said Wooster had a previously unblemished record and was an admirable mother to
six children, aged 15 to 32, one of whom had Down Syndrome.

He said her remorse was "undoubted and profound".

Wooster pleaded guilty to culpable driving causing death and negligently causing serious injury.

AAP sew/dk/drp/tnf

KEYWORD: WOOSTER NIGHTLEAD

2004 AAP Information Services Pty Limited (AAP) or its Licensors.