Mathew James Cole was driving along Rugby Road at Bevandale, NSW when he caused the fatal car crash. Photo: Google Maps.
A self-admitted ‘ice’ addict was speeding dangerously along a rural dirt road when he slid out of control and hit the car of beloved family woman Lynn Keyworth, killing her in the crash.
Mathew James Cole, also known as Matthew Webb, has been jailed after he admitted causing the death of the 68-year-old north of Yass, NSW on 16 October 2023.
The then-33-year-old was driving his Isuzu D-Max ute along Rugby Road in the rural locality of Bevendale, where there was a speed limit of 100 km/h, when he crashed into Ms Keyworth’s Subaru Impreza.
He had tried applying the brakes on his ute as he came over a hill, but slid out of control for about 60 metres, crossed onto the wrong side of the road and hit her car, causing it to roll. She was killed instantly.
Cole survived and was hospitalised with numerous injuries, with testing also revealing he had a very low level of methylamphetamine in his system.
Prosecutors didn’t claim the presence of the drug at that level impaired his driving ability.
Cole remained in hospital for some time, but then in December 2023, he committed the offence of driving with an illicit substance in his blood.
Meanwhile, police discovered he had been speeding at 119 km/h just five seconds before the crash.
“I remember coming up over the, like a bit of a rise corner, and there was a car in the middle of the road and I remember braking and I turned a bit and then, yeah, that’s all I remember,” Cole told police.
Cole, a father-of-one who worked in a shearing shed, pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving occasioning death before he was sentenced by the NSW District Court on 18 July.
“The real vice, inherent in the offence, was travelling too quickly doing so contrary to a warning sign,” Judge Alister Abadee said.
Just two months before the crash, Cole was sentenced to an 18-month intensive corrections order, which is a type of community-based sentence, for a charge of reckless wounding in company. Four days before the crash, he’d taken the drug ‘ice’.
Judge Abadee noted Cole’s prior criminal history showed he was “a violent man” and the nature of his current offending was its ripple effects.
“[It] inevitably involves a tragedy on different levels; most obviously to the deceased, but also others,” he said.
“The criminal justice system can never really provide a salve to those who feel wounded by her death.”
Judge Abadee said Ms Keyworth’s tragic death had a significant impact on her large family, who gave statements to the court that universally painted a picture of a beloved, community-minded and family-centred woman whose professional career took place in Canberra.
“There was nothing to doubt the sincerity of their grief and forms of loss of which they spoke,” he said.
Cole told a forensic psychologist he had become an ‘ice’ addict and also said the crash played out in his mind over and over again.
He wrote a letter of apology for the court and the judge accepted he was remorseful.
Cole was convicted and sentenced to a total of three years and four months’ jail with a non-parole period of two years and four months, which means he can be released from custody in May 2027.
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