A FOREIGN worker has pleaded guilty to negligent driving after a fatal collision just outside of Tamworth.
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In Tamworth District Court on Monday, Jhe Cian Lin's trial hit a road block with key witnesses "indefinitely unavailable". The court was told two had returned to their homes overseas and one was the deceased.
"It's nearly two years now largely without the ability to work that my client has been stuck in this country," public defender Stuart Bouveng said.
"I asked the matter to go to priority one so we could be confident it would get on; he has travelled from Sydney to be here for the trial today."
Lin is banned from driving or approaching any international departure point out of Australia and was forced to hand in his passport to the court in October 2017.
On Monday afternoon, 25-year-old Lin's charges were dropped in the district court and he pleaded guilty to fresh charges of negligent driving occasioning death and bodily harm caused by willful neglect in a motor vehicle.
Police allege Lin caused the crash on the Oxley Highway in March 2017 that killed Kim Chan.
Lin was behind the wheel of a red Ford sedan on the highway travelling west when two other vehicles, a silver Ford and grey Toyota collided head-on.
The woman behind the wheel of the Toyota was also injured; she is the sister of Kim Chan and one of the key witnesses in the case.
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She was unable to testify in Tamworth District Court on Monday because she was on a cruise, the court heard.
The trial was expected to last two weeks with an interpreter that Judge Jeffery McLennan had gone to great lengths to secure.
"These things get listed 12 months in advance, people get as much notice as you could possibly expect would be reasonable to be given," he said.
"There are interpreters who have been asked to be available and I have made a nuisance of myself in making sure they are available."
Lin will now face his sentence in Tamworth Local Court in May.