Dale Kennett backed quickly out of a driveway and took off down a regional Victorian street to get away from what he believed was a dangerous situation.
What he didn't notice was that as he did so, he had fatally run over a man who was lying on the road.
Robyn Young heard about the fatal crash on the radio. Moments later she got a dreaded knock at the door.
The victim was her 48-year-old son, Jason Young.
His death happened on March 10, 2020 just 13 days before COVID-19 changed everything.
"In grief we were locked down," Jason's sister Tammy said.
Her parents are victims left with cruel memories of their son dead on the road, tyre marks on his body.
"In a split second my parents lost a child, no one is ever ready for the loss of a child," Tammy said.
They struggle with that loss every day. Jason's computer - one he built himself - is still switched on. His thongs are still at the front door of the home he shared with his parents and young nephew.
Tammy said her brother had offered to donate a kidney if their father - who has kidney disease - ever needed it.
Their dad is now on a transplant list, waiting to receive one from a stranger.
Kennett, 53, had been sleeping in his car at a friend's house before the crash. He had ice in his system.
His friends had been out and arrived back at their home in Hamilton in a taxi, with Mr Young.
Some of the group went inside but Mr Young and another man stayed outside.
Witnesses said they saw the other man banging on the car windows before Kennett drove away.
Kennett's lawyer Campbell Thomson said his client was trying to escape an attack by the drunk man and believed driving away was his only option.
"If he got out it could have led to a damaging assault on either side," he said.
He said it was clearly problematic that Kennett was driving at night with his windows fogged up and only one headlight, but argued the objective dangerousness of his driving was low.
"No one in a position of Mr Kennett could have reasonably foreseen Mr Young would be lying on the road that night," he told the County Court on Wednesday.
The taxi driver said he didn't believe Kennett could have seen Mr Young, while a traffic expert couldn't say one way or the other.
Kennett was initially charged with dangerous driving causing death and failing to stop and render assistance.
A jury found him guilty of the first charge in August last year, but acquitted him of the second.
Prosecutors argue prison is the only right sentence for Kennett, but Mr Thomson has argued the minimum sentence should be the nearly nine months he has already served.
Judge Fran Dalziel will hand down her sentence next month.
