The driver behind the fatal hunter valley bus crash has begun hearing harrowing victim impact statements. Brett Button will hear 60 people, including victims' family members and survivors, speak this week before he is sentenced. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following story contains names and images of people who have died.
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00:00Grieving families, arriving for the start of three confronting days in court.
00:08Ten people were killed when a bus overturned on a roundabout in Greta last June.
00:13Twenty-five were injured.
00:15Among the victims were Lynnon Scott and her husband Andrew.
00:19Today her mother told Newcastle Court,
00:22My heart cannot accept the loss.
00:25Listening to her harrowing account was the man responsible for the crash, Brett Button.
00:30Today he heard from the first 17 family members and survivors before his sentencing.
00:37Graham McBride's wife Nadine and daughter Kaya were killed in the crash.
00:42He was badly injured.
00:43He told the court he misses having a glass of wine on the hill with his wife.
00:48Now I sit there alone, watching the sunset,
00:52hoping you'll come back with the sunrise in the morning.
00:55Rebecca Mullen's father described how his daughter was planning her wedding and her career as a doctor.
01:02Our lives were destroyed.
01:04Touching a daughter's cold arm in a morgue is something a father can't explain.
01:10Brett Button asked to appear remotely in court for the sentencing hearing.
01:15The judge denied the request,
01:17forcing him to sit just metres away from his victim's loved ones who delivered impact statements.
01:23Button's family was also in the courtroom.
01:26Judge Roy Ellis described the three days of hearings as unprecedented.
01:31Never before have so many people been killed and injured in a single motor vehicle incident.
01:37Emotions are likely to run high over the next few days
01:42and these proceedings are going to be unsettling for the victims and their families.
01:47In May, Button pleaded guilty to multiple charges,
01:51including several counts of dangerous driving occasioning death.
01:55The judge said the sentence will be lengthy.