STOPPED by police in a small coastal town on the mid-north coast, Jessica Wright was being asked if she knew where her boyfriend was.
Ten days earlier, on July 22, 2021, Wright had been "shocked" to hear a gunshot ring out in a unit in Darby Street, Cooks Hill and walked into the loungeroom to see her boyfriend of three months, Michael Rae, had shot 40-year-old Wesley Prentice in the chest during an argument over a debt.
Within seconds of the shooting, as Mr Prentice lay dying, the pair were spotted racing outside to a nearby car, shopping bags containing phones and drug paraphernalia in hand.
Wright was behind the wheel, Rae in the passenger seat as they fled along Darby Street headed for Lake Macquarie.
And then, over the next 10 days, while Rae was on the run and hiding out on the mid-north coast, Wright borrowed a vehicle from a family member so he could slip in and out of Newcastle undetected and helped him find accommodation at caravan parks at Nambucca Heads and Bonny Hills.
And so when the police tracked her down to a shopping centre carpark at Lake Cathie on August 1 and asked, then demanded, to know where Rae was, Wright said she had no idea, her final, desperate attempt to help Rae escape what he did in Cooks Hill.
Wright's lies delayed police by about an hour and Rae was ultimately arrested by heavily armed tactical police at a children's playground at Bonny Hills, a loaded shortened single-barrel 12-gauge shotgun in his backpack.
The weapon used to kill Mr Prentice has never been found.
The men wrestled and Rae pulled out a loaded gun that discharged and killed Mr Prentice when a witness managed to separate the pair.
Rae was charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis that it was an unlawful and dangerous act to be armed with the loaded firearm, pull it out during the argument with Mr Prentice and to have his finger on the trigger during the struggle.
He was jailed in June for a maximum of nine years, with a non-parole period of five years and nine months and will remain behind bars until at least 2029, his latest lengthy term of imprisonment in a criminal history littered with shootings, drugs and firearms.
Wright was not charged by investigators until December, 2021 and had pleaded not guilty to accessory after the fact to murder, denying she had assisted Rae in the days after the shooting.
But with Rae's murder charge dropped by prosecutors in the NSW Supreme Court, Wright's charge was replaced with a count of being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter and she pleaded guilty in Newcastle District Court in July.
Judge McGrath on Friday said Wright's attempts to assist Rae avoid justice spanned a number of days and were motivated by "a misguided loyalty and feelings of fear".
"She found herself between a rock and a hard place," Judge McGrath said. "She knew the man she was in a relationship with had shot someone dead, she knew people would be looking for him, she thought she was in danger if she stayed or if she went. She thought people would try to get to her or harm her and she thought that even though Mr Rae would be wanted not just by police but by associates of the man he killed, she would be safer with him."
Judge McGrath took into account Wright's prior good character, the 58 days she spent in custody bail refused after her arrest and the fact she had spent more than two years under house arrest when finding she could be sentenced to a 15-month intensive corrections order in lieu of a jail term.
