A man who hit and killed a university student when he fell asleep at the wheel three years ago had not slept for two days, a court has heard.
Paul Clifford Murray, 42, pleaded guilty last year to negligent driving causing the death of 23-year-old Malaysian student Tze Shyan Chang, in November 2005.
Murray was driving along Limestone Avenue on the afternoon of November 3 when he veered off the road near the intersection of Wakefield Avenue, hitting Mr Chang.
The victim, a student at the Australian National University, had been cutting the grass on the nature strip when he was struck.
Murray got out of his car, called for an ambulance and went to help Mr Chang, and told police he had not slept for the past 48 hours.
Mr Chang was taken to hospital with head injuries, where he died later that night.
In a sentencing hearing in the ACT Supreme Court yesterday, Murray said that on the night before the accident, he had been to ICBM nightclub in Civic and later to Sinsations in Mitchell.
On the day of the accident, he ate lunch in Civic before heading to his home in Hackett, having not slept properly since early the day before.
He said he had felt alert when driving in, but when he was leaving the car park to go home, he began to feel unusual.
He said he had been taking an anti-depressant medications sporadically for some time, which had sometimes interfered with his sleeping patterns, but that he had been fine in the time leading up to the accident.
He recalled having a blackout when on Limestone Avenue, but did not stop because there did not seem to be anywhere he could pull over.
He admitted he should have stopped his car somewhere, but as his home was so close, he had made the fatal decision to keep driving.
Moments later, Murray blacked out again, and woke to feel his car jolting over the gutter, and accidentally pushed the accelerator, hitting Mr Chang.
He had no alcohol in his system at the time of the accident, and tests showed the drugs in his system were within the acceptable range for anti-depressants.
Psychiatrist Robert Tym told the court Murray's insomnia in the days before the accident was unlikely to have been caused by the medication he was on.
Murray told the court yesterday he accepted full responsibility for the accident.
His voice shook as he described thinking about Mr Chang as a young man whose family had saved up to send him to what they thought would be a safe environment.
''It's just really dreadful,'' he said.In a victim impact statement tendered to the court, Mr Chang's brother described, in broken English, his despair at losing his brother and ''only friend'' in Australia.
He said he been unable to continue his own studies in Sydney because of his grief, and that his parents had been unable to accept their son's death.
Justice Hilary Penfold adjourned the hearing until August.