“And then, like, I saw it, and, like, f--- I can beat it, so I put my foot flat,” he told one of his mates in a phone call intercepted by police the next day. The man on the bike, Keith Stevens, was thrown onto the ground. Instead of stopping, the teenager accelerated, trapping Mr Stevens and his bike under the BMW. Emergency services at the scene of the crash in Mitcham. Credit:Twitter/James Hancock, ABC Mr Stevens was dragged for 85 metres over seven seconds before the fuel tank ruptured, creating an intense petrol and oil fire under the car. “It’s going to be on ... your conscience for the rest of your life,” the teenager’s friend told him on the phone.

“Even after the accident, bro, I didn’t feel anything. Like, I didn’t feel no pain, no emotions about it,” the teenager replied. His friend then asked him if he cared about the life he had taken. “Yeah, bro, I f---in’ murdered a f---in’ innocent 33-year-old man,” he said. At first, after Amanda Wilson was told her partner had been in a motorcycle crash, she thought of broken bones, maybe a head injury. But Mr Stevens was unrecognisable in the hospital, burnt from head to toe.

She couldn’t touch his face, kiss his lips or have one last conversation. Keith Stevens. “The nurse helped me to make footprints of his feet, to cut some of his burnt hair to keep,” Ms Wilson told the court. “I just wanted to stroke his face and kiss him. I wanted him to be OK so badly.” After the collision, the 17-year-old drove from the scene. He dumped the car on Eastlink and he and his friends jumped a fence into Haideh Place, Wantirna South, and tried to kick down the front door of a house.

The terrified resident, a woman, desperately put her weight against the door so they couldn’t get in. The boys gave up, but moved on to another home in the street, breaking in and stealing a car while the residents were home, before dumping the Toyota Camry in Narre Warren. He was arrested the next day, on November 9, the same day Mr Stevens’ life support was switched off. Mr Stevens breathed on his own for 35 minutes after life support was switched off, Ms Wilson told the court in an emotional victim impact statement. “He wasn’t ready to die ... but he wasn’t ready to give up. I know he wouldn’t have wanted to leave his son or my daughter,” she said.

She had already told his family in Scotland that he was dying. His teenage son from his former partner came to the hospital, where he and Ms Wilson’s six-year-old daughter clung to each other, shattered, she said. Ms Wilson kept her head on Mr Stevens’ chest as he took his final breath. “I sat with him ... hoping unrealistically that even though his kidneys had been taken for donation that he would suddenly start breathing again,” she said. She told the judge that the only thing that gives her peace is that the justice system would give the deserved punishment. “Keith does not deserve to die the way he did. No one deserves to die the way that Keith did. I remain broken.”