It wasn’t justice. Not for Giovanni Varagnolo’s family, anyway. There was no sentence that could bring back the generous and kind 54-year-old father-of-five.

No jail term could turn back the clock to a time before a tragic and bizarre set of circumstances saw him hit, run over and killed by his own car in the Newcastle suburb of New Lambton in the early hours of New Year’s Day this year.

Giovanni Varagnolo, 54, was killed while walking home early on New Year's Day; the scene of the crash and Mr Varagnolo's Holden Statesman which was being driven by his friend when it hit him.

The man behind the wheel of the car, 45-year-old Ivan William Johnson-Geale, was a friend and neighbour of Mr Varagnolo’s who had borrowed his Holden Statesman a week before the hit-and-run.

On the night he hit and killed Mr Varagnolo, Johnson-Geale had earlier declined to pick his friend up from the Newcastle CBD.