WESLEY Prentice had only just hit the ground, shot at close range during a struggle at Cooks Hill, when Jessica Wright began doing everything she could to help her boyfriend, Michael Rae, evade justice.
"Mick, we've gotta go," Wright told her partner immediately after he had gunned down Mr Prentice, 40, during a wrestle in the narrow confines of a unit in Darby Street on the afternoon of July 22, 2021.
Within seconds of the shooting, as Mr Prentice lay dying, the pair were spotted racing outside to a nearby car, shopping bags containing phones and drug paraphernalia in hand.
Wright was behind the wheel, Rae in the passenger seat as they fled along Darby Street headed for Lake Macquarie.
And then, over the next 10 days, while Rae was on the run and hiding out on the mid-north coast, Wright borrowed a vehicle from a family member so he could slip in and out of Newcastle undetected and helped him find accommodation at caravan parks at Nambucca Heads and Bonny Hills.
He was arrested at a children's playground at Bonny Hills on August 1, a loaded shortened single-barrel 12-gauge shotgun in his backpack.
The weapon used to kill Mr Prentice has never been found.
Wright was nearby and had told police just moments earlier that she had no idea where he was, her final, desperate attempt at helping Rae escape what he did in Cooks Hill.
The men wrestled and Rae pulled out a loaded gun that discharged and killed Mr Prentice when a witness managed to separate the pair.
Wright later told an associate that she had witnessed the fight between Rae and Mr Prentice, but not the shooting.
She said, from where she was standing, it looked like Mr Prentice "had it all over" Rae before he was shot.
Rae was charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis that it was an unlawful and dangerous act to be armed with the loaded firearm, pull it out during the argument with Mr Prentice and to have his finger on the trigger during the struggle.
He was jailed in June for a maximum of nine years, with a non-parole period of five years and nine months and will remain behind bars until at least 2029, his latest lengthy term of imprisonment in a criminal history littered with shootings, drugs and firearms.
Wright was not charged by investigators until December, 2021 and had pleaded not guilty to accessory after the fact to murder, denying she had assisted Rae in the days after the shooting.
But with Rae's murder charge dropped by prosecutors in the NSW Supreme Court, Wright's charge was replaced with a count of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter and she pleaded guilty in Newcastle District Court on Thursday.
She remains on bail and will be sentenced in October.
