MANSLAUGHTER AFTERMATH

Woman guilty of fatally running down Perth caravan park manager with car.

Posted Thursday 31 July 2014 at 3:54pm, updated Friday 1 August 2014 at 6:13am

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A 46-year-old woman has been found guilty of unlawfully killing the manager of a Perth caravan park by running her down with a car.

A Supreme Court jury deliberated for more than five hours before finding Katie Walkerley guilty of the manslaughter of 59-year-old Rita Addenbrooke in February last year.

The court was told Walkerley was playing loud music in her car when she ran down Addenbrooke, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and used a walking stick.

Addenbrooke and her husband had left their residence after hearing what they thought was a domestic argument.

After Mr Addenbrooke went to call police, other residents of the caravan park heard his wife yelling, before they saw her standing in front of Walkerley's car.

She was not going fast, but Addenbrooke ended up on the bonnet of the car before landing on the road and hitting her head.

Prosecutor Barry Murray said Walkerley later told police she had been "in an angry mood" and that Addenbrooke had put her hands on the car bonnet before she "nudged her car forward" saying to herself, "you're in the way".

Mr Murray said Walkerley told the officers "the lady went to the side of the car" which gave her a clear way through.

Walkerley had denied any wrongdoing and maintained Addenbrooke's death was a tragic accident.

She will be sentenced in October.

Posted 31July 2014, updated 1August 2014.

My Story:

Daylight began brightening the bedroom. I groaned and rolled to face away from the window and tried to shut out the beginning of a new day with my eyelids, to no avail. In frustration I threw back the bed covers and lowered my feet over the edge of the bed and raised my head, scanning the room, and focused on her picture hanging on the wall. Dropped my face into my hands and cried.

I had lost the woman I loved for 32 years, taken away from me so suddenly in a stupid act without reason from a woman driver who obviously did not care, deliberately running over my wife.

The first month since Rita’s passing, I struggled with every day. I awoke with the daylight and slept only when it took me, many nights I spent curled up on the lounge unable to raise myself to make my way to the bed. If it were not for work interruptions, I would probably have worn an indentation on that place. I was not coping despite outward appearance; I missed her company at night and the ability to drop in and see her in the office whenever I was available to do so. I loved Rita despite our turbulent life together and she loved me. We always thought it would be a lifetime love, but neither of us expected that life to be over so soon so final.

They say you never really lose anyone, the molecular structure that made up their being, never really leaves, it is just re-structured… Scattered if you like… To no longer be an ordered mass of a living being as we know it, and each of us goes on with portions of that person in us and on us. Every touch transfers energy between particles and that energy joins onto ours… So, the loss of that person stops this energy transfer and after so many years together we feel incomplete. This is where the hole in the soul begins, it is no longer being refreshed by this transfer and each of us either learns to live with the loss of a refreshing update now and then, or we pick up pieces from anywhere it is offered or, alternately, we open our souls to another and allow new transfers of energy.

I was at the ‘I did not give a shit’ stage, not wanting my soul to feel better, not wanting anything from anyone… It would only hurt in the end when they were also taken from me. Some people can easily go from one person to the next, their soul’s void of constant one on one sharing, but filling the gaps with any energy that would come their way.

Rita was always concerned I would become a hermit if I lost her, not wanting the contact of others not wanting to share my soul with anyone ever again, so much so that she made me promise to find another love and carry on… But it was not this promise that started this story; it was the bone chilling loneliness of coming home to no one at the end of the day, preparing meals for one after so many years of doing so for two. I could have gotten use to it I suppose, but I did not really wish to, I was not destined to be a loner, despite what others may have thought… I needed companionship and this day and age for someone that did not frequent clubs, pubs, or sports groups there was only one place to go.

Four months after Rita’s passing, I began my journey through the jungle of dating sites on the internet to find that most were exactly as we assume, havens for the scammers and the bastards of society praying on the vulnerable and the weak… Four weeks into this and I was ready to give it all a miss until I ventured onto one site outside of Australia and thought ‘Oh well, it may be good for a laugh for a while’… Immediately I had hundreds of hits from young women looking for A sugar daddy, and just wanting to come to Australia. After a week it had settled down and the scammers stopped pushing at someone who clearly was not going to respond, but I had resigned myself to getting the hell out of this internet dating crap and either finding company the old-fashioned way or not at all.

Five months after Rita’s passing, I was a lonely old man ready for the scrap heap, despondent and resigned to a life of a hermit… So soon I had given up at the ripe old age or 56. It was a reality I found hard to face, I had lost the one I thought I would share my old age with, the only one I had ever loved and thought I would ever love. Life had dealt me a blow I never thought I could recover from and this entire internet dating bull shit was just a desperate stab in the dark for something – someone and now it was over, I would close them off and be done with it, and my soul would never be whole again.