A young mother has broken down in court as she pleaded guilty to carless driving over the horror highway crash which killed her seven-year-old twins.
Rachel Van Oyen, 32, was driving the Toyota Camry that veered off Western Australia‘s Great Eastern Highway and hit a tree in the state’s Wheatbelt region 300km east of Perth in February.
She and her young daughters Macey and Riley had been travelling back to Perth after visiting relatives in Kalgoorlie.
Van Oyen escaped with only minor injuries while Macey and Riley died at the scene.
On the stretch of road where the smash occurred, visible tyre skid marks showed that the car had heavily braked as it veered off the single lane highway.
Van Oyen was charged with two counts of careless driving causing death, grievous bodily harm or bodily harm.
She pleaded guilty to both charges in Northam Magistrates Court on Monday.
It was the first time Van Oyen had appeared in court in person since the charges were laid.
Rachel Van Oyen pictured with her twin daughters Macey and Riley who died after a horror smash on a remote stretch of highway in Perth
The fatal crash happened on the Great Eastern Highway with the Toyota Camry hitting a tree 300km east of Perth in the WA’s Wheatbelt.
At previous hearing her lawyer Michael Ryan told the court ‘significant psychological issues’ caused by the crash had prevented Van Oyen from attending.
Mr Ryan said it was ‘extremely traumatic’ going through the evidence of the crash with his client and that he ‘didn’t want to do that to her again’.
In the days following the crash Van Oyen posted on Facebook that ‘nothing makes sense now’ and that it ‘should have been me’ who died.
‘What I would give to take your places, my precious girls,” she wrote.
Following the fatal crash Ms van Oyen said there were no words to ‘describe this emptiness and pain I’m drowning in’
“I have never felt so helpless as I did that day. All I could do was try to hold you briefly even though you’d both grown wings.
‘In a blink of an eye everything changed. My entire world fell apart, vanished. There are still no words to describe this emptiness and pain I’m drowning in.
‘Nothing makes sense now, you two were my absolute world and nothing made me more complete than being your mother.
‘I hope you both know how truly sorry I am.’
Social media posts by family and friends described the little girls as ‘magical little twins’ and ‘true sunshine souls’.
WA Premier Roger Cook previously described the incident at the time as an ‘absolute tragedy’.
A Gofundme page set up by a family member to ‘help Rachel’ has raised over $53,000.
‘Macey and Riley brought us so much love and joy, and as hard as it is without them, our lives were made better by their short existence,’ the page stated.
‘They were vibrant, cheeky, and beautiful young girls who had so much life and promise ahead of them.’
Ms Van Oyen will be sentenced in March next year.
