Those were the words of a woman whose ex-boyfriend tried to kill her by ramming her car off the road and then assaulted her before she was rescued by strangers who were also driving on the country road at night.
He also choked her twice so that she passed out on a separate occasion two months earlier.
Jack Chambers, 33, from the Sydney suburb of Meadowbank pleaded guilty in the Shepparton Supreme Court on Friday, February 7, to attempted murder, stalking and five counts of conduct endangering life.
“On three occasions my (ex) partner came close to ending my life,” the woman said.
“I became a victim of domestic violence at the age of 22 and now I have to live with it for the rest of my life.”
The woman read her own victim impact statement to the court in what was a chilling account of what could have been.
“I express my deepest gratitude to my saviours… for putting their lives at risk. If it wasn’t for them, I believe my life would have been cut short,” she said of the couple and a teenage boy who stopped to help, and whose car Chambers also rammed on a country road at Murchison north on January 12, 2023.
The woman told how she started dating Chambers when she was 18 and he was 27, and how she had lent him $84,000 of her savings over their four-year relationship, thanks in part to his gambling addiction.
When she ended their relationship on October 31, 2022, she said it “felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted from my shoulders”.
Nine days later, when they met to exchange personal items, he locked her in his hotel room, pushed her onto the bed and strangled her until she passed out.
“I felt these were going to be my final moments and I wasn’t going to leave the room alive,” she said.
“I clearly believe he wanted me dead.”
He choked her a second time, and she again passed out, before managing to escape.
The woman told the court each day she woke up in fear because Chambers has been released back into public, with “only a piece of paper” protecting her.
The woman told of waking up on January 12, 2023, to just “an ordinary day”.
She went to work, and was driving home that night.
Chambers rammed her vehicle off the road and then punched her several times, before she was able to escape and run off.
“I was running for dear life,” she said.
“I knew I had to run because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t survive.
“An innocent family pulled over.
“If this innocent family hadn’t stopped to help me, I wouldn’t be here today. He would have run over me.”
The woman said she now felt like her future was restricted, because while Chambers was locked up now – and had been since the incident ‒ she said she had to plan for when he would be released.
She said she felt let down that Chambers had been released on bail after the choking incident.
“I feel an intervention order is just a piece of paper,” she said.
The woman also noted in her victim impact statement that this was “the first time I felt I have been heard”.
“I hope this will prevent myself or another woman becoming a victim of domestic violence.”
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