her siblings and a grandchild. It was a
childhood that had its struggles, but
built resilience in young Samantha. She
didn’t know it then but she would need
plenty to draw on in later life.
Four years ago, Samantha and her
partner Luke Hunt were involved in a
car accident that resulted in the loss
of one life and the upheaval of many
others. Like all accidents, a sequence of
tiny, crucial decisions conspired to put
Samantha 22, Luke, 26,
and a man they’d never
met, Kenneth Lay, on a
collision course that day.
Now, in a bid to
educate others about
the dangers of speeding,
Samantha is doing her
best to explain what hap-
pened on that morning of
Saturday, May 12, 2012.
She finds it hard to speak about the
accident without breaking down, her
eyes often filling with tears. It doesn’t
take long to realise that behind the smile
lies a deep reservoir of distress that she
has kept carefully dammed up; one, to
keep her sadness from public view, and,
two, to stop herself from going under.
“Everything that could have gone
wrong did go wrong that day,” she begins.
“Luke had been really busy with work. I
wanted him to have a day off. Alsobecause the traffic was really bad, we
didn’t go the way we would normally go.”
It meant that at around 10.40am,
Luke and Samantha, with Luke at the
wheel of his Holden, were driving down
Warringah Road, Narraweena, at the
intersection with Alfred Street, en route
to a gym on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
Local man Kenneth Lay, 78, driving
in a Hyundai Lantra, had just begun to
turn right into Alfred Street when Luke’s
car went through a light that was, by
now, either amber or red. Police would
estimate he was travelling more than
30km beyond the speed limit. The
Holden struck the Hyundai on the pas-
senger’s side and sent it flying. Luke’s car
went into a spin and careered into a tree.
“I was texting on my phone and
had my head down,” says Samantha,
“so I don’t remember the accident. I think
my body went into shock and I either
passed out or fainted.”
She injured her knee when it hit the
glovebox so hard it cracked the plastic,
but apart from that and a few small cuts,
she was unhurt. Luke was more seri-
ously injured, with suspected spinal
fractures. “I was freaking out. I didn’t
know what was happening. Luke was in
a lot of pain. He thought he was dying.”
Paramedics rushed the badly
injured Kenneth to Royal North Shore
Hospital, but staff couldn’t save him; he
was dead on arrival from a cardiac
arrest. His family were
devastated. He and his
wife had lived in the area
for 40 years and Kenneth
had been her carer, as well
as a father, a grandfather
to 16 children and a soon-
to-be great-grandfather.
When Samantha talks
about “Mr Lay”, as she
calls him respectfully, her
voice grows dim and sad. “We didn’t
know what had happened until Luke
was in hospital. The police came and said
Mr Lay had passed away,” she recalls, her
voice breaking. “Luke was in shock and
started sobbing. He couldn’t believe it.”
In November 2012, six months after
the accident, Luke was charged with
dangerous driving occasioning death.
He pleaded guilty. In May 2014, he was
sentenced to four years’ jail, with a mini-
mum two years before parole, and wasWEDDING BELLE
Samantha Harris
married long-time
fiancé, Luke Hunt,
in a very low-key
ceremony in
March 2014, just
months before
he spent two
years in jail for
dangerous driving
causing the death
of 78-year-old
Kenneth Lay.
“I was freaking
out. Luke was
in a lot of pain.
He thought
that he was
dying”Exclusive
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