A foreign driver has been found guilty of careless driving causing injury after crashing into a horse and seriously injuring its rider.
Chinese national 28-year-old Peng Wang was charged following the horror crash on Postman Rd in Auckland's Dairy Flat in 2016.
Horse rider and Newshub journalist Karen Rutherford is still recovering from the August crash more than eight months later.
Among other injuries, she suffered a de-gloved leg and now has difficulty with her memory. The horse she was riding, Curious George, was killed.
In court on Wednesday, the judge called it the "most serious example of careless driving possible", and Wang now faces a maximum of three months in jail.
But an emotional Ms Rutherford told Newshub it was "a bit of a shallow victory".
"We always knew he would be found guilty because it was an open and shut case - but George isn't here, and that's the tragedy in all of this."
At the time, Wang was driving on a Chinese license. A New Zealand one is not required until after a year in the country.
He admitted he had never read the New Zealand road code, but tried to learn about driving from those he was visiting on his business trip.
"He killed George and he almost killed me. It's a blatant disregard for the law," Ms Rutherford said.
Ms Rutherford and her daughter Ella had been riding on the long, straight stretch of road and hugging the edge of the road, when Wang drove toward them and hit them.
The impact totalled his grey van, killed Ms Rutherford's horse, Curious George, and very nearly killed Ms Rutherford. Ella told the court she thought her mother had died.
As she lay in the ditch, Wang never came to help her.
"I found it quite abhorrent that someone can inflict such damage on someone and stay in his car, and when he does get out of the car, he's too busy looking at pieces of his car and how he can fix things," she said.
"It took 40 minutes for police to arrive and still in that time, while I was being loaded into that ambulance, he never came anywhere near me - nor did his passenger.
"My daughter was covered head-to-toe in blood, her horse was dying - he never ever went to see if they were okay."
Ms Rutherford's leg smashed back into her head and was degloved. She broke a number of bones and eight months on, still needs ongoing concussion therapy.
Wang said he was travelling along the centre line to give the riders room, but would not cross onto the other side of the road, because he thought it was illegal. It isn't.
In court and speaking through an interpreter, Wang claimed he passed the horse Ella was riding, before he says Ms Rutherford's horse changed direction and lurched toward him, hitting his car.
Earlier in the trial, 13-year-old Ella Rutherford described how she and her mother saw Wang's grey van coming toward them at about 80km/h, the speed limit on Postman Road.
She says Wang never slowed down, and hugged the white line on the left shoulder of the road, not the centre line, as he testified.
Ella said she signalled wildly with her hands for the driver to slow down but Wang said he did not see her signals.
In her victim impact statement, Ms Rutherford said her family was left "shattered" by the crash.
She still has flashbacks of the crash: "I see you bearing down on us at full speed on the very edge of the road.
"I had faith you would slow down and veer away, but you never did," she said.
"What possessed you to drive like this, head-on, into two people on horses who'd chosen a safe path on the road's edge?
"Every hour of every day since you did this to us, I think of that day and get a deep well of pain rise up inside me. The tears burn. I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and I am not the person I used to be."
Ms Rutherford said she was angry with Wang's "arrogance", for pleading not guilty and "[his] lies throughout this whole ordeal".
"You'll never know the enormity and ongoing traumatic effect this has had on me, and those around me."
Wang is due to be sentenced next week.
Newshub.
