• Joseph Kelly, 84, died after being knocked from his bicycle in Napier by Hyeju Kim.
• Kim pleaded guilty to careless use of a motor vehicle causing death and wanted a discharge without conviction.
• Kim was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and ordered to pay $2000 for emotional harm.

A driver’s moment of carelessness ended the life of a “big personality” Irishman who was a beloved family man and rugby club stalwart during his nearly 60 years in New Zealand.

Joseph James Kelly, 84, died on July 24 last year, three days after he was knocked from his bicycle at an intersection in Taradale, Napier and suffered multiple injuries.

A Korean woman who is seeking New Zealand residency, Hyeju Kim, 41, pleaded guilty in December to careless use of a motor vehicle causing death.

She appeared in the Napier District Court on Friday and was sentenced to 100 hours of community work.

Judge Russell Collins said what made Kim’s driving careless was “you failing to see someone on the road who was there to be seen”.

Kelly’s widow Kath and family members were in the court for the sentencing.

His daughter Rowena Kelly read a victim impact statement, in which she described the trauma of witnessing doctors and nurses trying to resuscitate her father on the day that he died in hospital.

She said her dad, a seaman who settled in Hawke’s Bay in the 1960s, was well-loved in Napier and in his home town of Skerries in Ireland.

She said he was popular and social, a “big personality”, and a vibrant, fit and happy man who played an integral part in the lives of his three children and six grandchildren.

She said the family wondered what had distracted Kim on the day of the collision.

“Our lives have been turned upside down,” Rowena Kelly said.

“You have taken him away from us and he is gone forever,” she told Kim.

Kelly was a stalwart of the Napier Marist and later the Napier Marist Old Boys Rugby clubs. He was club president in the 1980s and a life member.

A tribute on the club website said he was the driving force behind the “Skerries Exchange”, under which players from Napier and the rugby club in Skerries, Ireland, travelled to play for a season in each other’s colours.

He was also instrumental in organising a tour of Ireland by the Napier club in 2003.

Messages on Kelly’s memorial page include some from Irish rugby players who came to New Zealand, along with one from the Maritime Union, which said he was a highly respected workmate on the Napier waterfront.

‘Somebody lost their life’

Kim’s counsel, Roger Philip, sought a discharge without conviction for his client, who had no criminal record, and who had attained a qualification in early childhood education since moving to New Zealand.

He said that she was in the process of applying for permanent residency, and any criminal conviction would place that application in jeopardy.

But Judge Collins declined the request, saying he could only grant a discharge if the consequences of a conviction were out of proportion to gravity of offending.

”There is an inherent seriousness in this charge that can’t be diminished – and that is that somebody lost their life,” the judge said.

“You never intended this. You never set out to cause this to happen …. There was no way you wanted this to happen,” he told Kim.

But the judge said that because cars were “deadly machines” there was a community and social responsibility to drive carefully.

Judge Collins convicted Kim, and ordered her to do the 100 hours of the community work, and pay $2000 as an emotional harm payment – something, he said, which the Kelly family had not asked for.

Kim was also disqualified from driving for 12 months.

A letter of apology was read to the court and the judge said he accepted that Kim was remorseful.

The Kelly family was asked for their reaction to the sentence.

“Under the tragic circumstances we believe that the outcome of today’s sentencing was appropriate,” Rowena Kelly said in an email.

“We are relieved to now have this court process behind us.”

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.