HIS car split in two after slamming into a power pole on Maitland Road and his mate lying dead nearby, drunk driver Surinder Singh did something unconscionable.
He tried to blame his dead mate.
"I begged him not to drive due to having a few drinks," Indian national Surinder told paramedics.
He had been in the passenger seat, Surinder Singh told police, and his friend and housemate, the victim, 27-year-old Jujhar Singh, had been driving.
"I told him don't drive," Surinder later told investigators. "It's not important enough to leave the house but he said we needed food. "I told him: 'no we are drunk we can't go'... and he told me to come with him and I went and was sitting in the passenger seat."
He told them Jujhar had lost control of the car, "cos he was over speed, I was sitting beside him and I said: 'please, go slow'."
It was after 11pm on November 5 last year and moments before the crash the Hyundai sedan had been swerving in and out of traffic on Maitland Road, reaching speeds of 130km/h in a 50km/h zone.
And eight seconds after it raced past an RBT station on the opposite side of the road, the Hyundai crested a bridge over the railway corridor and careered straight into a power pole outside The Royal Oak Hotel at Tighes Hill.
The impact ripped the car in half, snapped the front passenger seat and Jujhar was ejected from the wreckage, suffering multiple fatal injuries.
Surinder, suffering only minor injuries, freed himself from the car and began telling anyone who would listen that it was his mate who had been driving.
But it was a lie, a cowardly attempt to avoid responsibility.
Surinder, who didn't have a NSW license and who had a blood alcohol reading of 0.167 at the time of the crash, was the man behind the wheel.
He and Jujhar had shared a bottle of whiskey before Surinder had decided to drive the pair to a nearby bottle shop to get a six-pack of beer.
It was on the 1.5 kilometre journey home that Surinder sped, weaved in and out of traffic and, ultimately, crashed head on into a power pole, killing his mate.
The 32-year-old on Wednesday appeared in Newcastle Local Court via audio visual link from jail where he pleaded guilty to aggravated dangerous driving occasioning death after prosecutors withdrew a number of less serious charges.
He will next appear in Newcastle District Court next month to get a sentence date.
