A Perth teenager previously accused of murder has pleaded guilty in a Perth court to a downgraded charge of unlawfully killing a pregnant woman by throwing a lump of concrete through a car window, which hit her in the head.
WARNING: This story contains the image and name of an Indigenous person who has died.
The youth cannot be identified because he was only 17 on November 29 last year, when 30-year-old Diane Miller was fatally injured.
At the time, police said Ms Miller — a mother of one who was five months pregnant — was sitting in a vehicle in the car park of a shopping centre in Karawara about 7pm, when an altercation erupted between one of the occupants of the car and a group of teenagers.
As the car she was in drove away, one of the teenagers threw what was described as a lump of concrete, which went through the open front passenger window and hit Ms Miller in the temple.
She immediately went into cardiac arrest.
Members of the public and police officers spent 20 minutes performing CPR to try to save her before she was rushed to hospital in a critical condition.
Ms Miller spent three days in a coma in the intensive care unit at Royal Perth Hospital, where relatives and friends held a vigil, before she and her unborn child died.
The teenager was arrested the day after the incident and after appearing in court on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm, he was remanded in custody to the Banksia Hill juvenile detention centre.
After Ms Miller's death, the charge was upgraded to murder, but on Wednesday in the Perth Children's Court, that charge was discontinued by state prosecutors who accepted the teenager's guilty plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter.
The court was told the teenager, who has a six-page criminal record, was diagnosed with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in 2020.
Victim remembered as 'very loving mother'
Diane Miller's sister Alison was in the public gallery for Wednesday's hearing, accompanied by homicide detectives.
Outside the court and wearing a T-shirt paying tribute to Ms Miller, she described her sister as "a very loving mother".
"She was going to be a mother again and to me she got taken so suddenly, but I hope justice does what it does," she said.
"I still count down [the] days my sister's been taken, my nephew's going to miss out on his mum, my whole family, they're shattered, they're broken. Words can't express how I feel."
Alison said it was unfair the teenager was only being held accountable for her sister's death, and not that of her unborn child, who had been named Leroy.
"That was going to be a boy born next month ... "
However, the teenager can not be held legally liable for the death Ms Miller's unborn child.
The teenager, who appeared in court via video link from detention, was again remanded in custody until he faces a sentencing hearing on April 27 and April 28 before the President of the Children's Court, Judge Hylton Quail.
The offence of manslaughter carries a maximum life jail term, however the teenager's age is likely to be important consideration in determining his sentence.
