Warning: This story contains racist language and disgusting comments about an Indigenous man who has died.
A 24-year-old Darwin man will serve no prison time despite killing an Aboriginal man in a hit and run incident, after which he denigrated the man, and another Aboriginal man he struck, with racist slurs in "disgusting" text messages.
Jake Danby hit the two men with his car and fled the scene, later telling his friends he'd run down an "oxygen thief".
In the NT Supreme Court on Monday Justice Sonia Brownhill handed down a 12-month community corrections order, with five months to be spent in home detention.
On June 13 last year, Danby was driving above the speed limit outside of the Hibiscus Shopping Centre in Leanyer when two men attempted to cross the road.
Danby struck them with his car and did not stop.
The ABC reports that one of the two men, 39-year-old Mr Whitehurst, was thrown seven metres and received a traumatic brain injury from which he later died in Royal Darwin Hospital.
The other man, who was 37 at the time, was hospitalised with non-life threatening injuries.
The court heard Danby sent a series of "disgusting" text messages to his friends in the hours after the crash, in which he labelled the crash victims as "n*****s" and "dogs".
Danby described the crash as a "two for one combo" in the texts, the ABC reports.
"They learnt their lesson now, maybe next time they will use the crossing instead of walking out in front of cars, expecting me to stop like they own the place," he wrote.
"They were rolling all over the road like bitches when I looked in my … mirror.
"The world needs c***s like me to take a hit to teach these c***s a lifelong lesson.
"Maybe if I'm lucky I'll be able to claim his Centrelink for taking out another oxygen thief".
The ABC reports that Justice Brownhill said the texts "demonstrated a shockingly callous disregard for the welfare of the victims".
"You struck the victim as he was crossing the road, and by doing so you caused him significant injury which ultimately led to his death," she said.
"The text messages you sent … demonstrate that you were well aware, as soon as it happened, that you had struck a person with such force to cause him to fly up in the air and hit the windscreen of your car.
"The degree of callousness and disdain expressed in those text messages for two other human beings, who you have obviously harmed, most likely seriously, is difficult to fathom."
However, Justice Brownhill also told Danby she was "prepared to accept" that he is "genuinely remorseful for your offending, having thought about what you did and how you responded to it, over the course of the time since then".
Outside court after his sentencing, Danby said he was "extremely sorry" for what had occurred and acknowledged the text messages he sent after the incident were "disgusting".
Since taking office, the Country Liberal government of the Northern Territory, which had campaigned on a "tough on crime" election platform, has issued a number of statements celebrating the significant increase in the number of people going to prison in the NT. The government also dropped the age of criminal responsibility down to 10, so children that age can be jailed.
Danby will be "detained" in a house at Humpty Doo for the next five months, having killed one man and seriously injured another.
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