A young mother will spend the next two months in jail after her twin daughters died in a single car crash while she was behind the wheel.
Rachel Van Oyen, 32, was sentenced over two counts of careless driving causing death, grievous bodily harm or bodily harm in Northam Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
The Halls Head mother was driving her Toyota Camry along Western ‘s Great Eastern Highway in the Wheatbelt region, 300km east of Perth, in February after visiting family in Kalgoorlie for a wedding.
The court was told her car veered off the road when she swerved to avoid a roadside marker, causing it to skid, before it clipped a tree, flipped and landed on its roof.
Both children were ejected from the car nd the seven-year-old died at the scene.
Van Oyen’s lawyer, Michael Ryan, told the court his client has ‘done all the right things’ to ensure her daughters were safe.
She had stopped for breaks in the long-haul drive and there was no suggestion that fatigue played a part in the crash and everyone in the car had been wearing seatbelts.
Van Oyen received an eight-month jail term for each of the girls’ deaths which was partly suspended by Magistrate Sarah Oliver.
Mr Ryan told the court it was a heartbreaking incident.
‘The circumstances around this incident is that Ms Van Oyen has closed her eyes for a second, not even a second, the vehicle has veered slightly, to the shoulder, she could see there was a roadside marker, her instinct was to veer to the right to avoid the collision with that marker,’ he told the court, reported WA Today.
‘She’s applied too much right direction on that steering wheel, created a perfect situation when the vehicle has slid sideways.’
Magistrate Oliver said the crash was ‘unquestionably serious’.
Van Oyen will spend two months behind bars before being released on a conditional suspended sentence for six months.
The rest of her sentence is suspended for a period of 12 months.
Outside the court the estranged father of her children, Darius James, said nothing could bring his daughters back.
‘If they were in child car restraints suitable to their size, the outcome may have been different,’ a family friend said on behalf of the girls’ father, reported the publication.
The family friend said this fatal decision will ‘haunt’ the family forever.
‘Every time our side of the family had the girls, they were always in car seats. They were not of size to not be in car seats,’ they said.
Van Oyen her young daughters Macey and Riley had been travelling back to Perth after visiting relatives in Kalgoorlie.
The mother escaped with only minor injuries while Macey and Riley died at the scene.
On the stretch of road where the smash occurred, visible tyre skid marks showed that the car had heavily braked as it veered off the single lane highway.
Van Oyen pleaded guilty to both charges laid against her.
At previous hearing her lawyer Michael Ryan told the court ‘significant psychological issues’ caused by the crash had prevented Van Oyen from attending.
Mr Ryan said it was ‘extremely traumatic’ going through the evidence of the crash with his client and that he ‘didn’t want to do that to her again’.
In the days following the crash Van Oyen posted on Facebook that ‘nothing makes sense now’ and that it ‘should have been me’ who died.
‘What I would give to take your places, my precious girls,’ she wrote.
‘I have never felt so helpless as I did that day. All I could do was try to hold you briefly even though you’d both grown wings.
‘In a blink of an eye everything changed. My entire world fell apart, vanished. There are still no words to describe this emptiness and pain I’m drowning in.
‘Nothing makes sense now, you two were my absolute world and nothing made me more complete than being your mother.
‘I hope you both know how truly sorry I am.’
Social media posts by family and friends described the little girls as ‘magical little twins’ and ‘true sunshine souls’.
WA Premier Roger Cook previously described the incident at the time as an ‘absolute tragedy’.
A Gofundme page set up by a family member to ‘help Rachel’ raised over $53,000.
‘Macey and Riley brought us so much love and joy, and as hard as it is without them, our lives were made better by their short existence,’ the page stated.
‘They were vibrant, cheeky, and beautiful young girls who had so much life and promise ahead of them.’