He was a doctor who had built a successful clinic helping pregnant women navigating childbirth, she was a promising university student who had her whole life ahead of her.
And the confronting sliding-doors moment that ended in Elizabeth Pearce’s death and Rhys Henry Stone Bellinge’s imprisonment was aired before a shocked gallery of onlookers in the WA Supreme Court during his sentencing on Tuesday.
Footage taken from the dashcam of his Jaguar showed the 46-year-old navigating small roads, traffic lights and roundabouts Perth’s affluent western suburbs at high speed – at times driving more than 130km/h – before he crashed into an Uber taking Pearce home in Dalkeith.
The court was told Bellinge was struggling with a separation from his wife at the time of the incident, who remained in the family home with his children while he temporarily relocated to live with his father, Bruce Bellinge.
“F— you, f— you, you piece of s—, that is my house, it is my house,” Bellinge can be heard ranting in the footage in the lead up to the crash.
“My house, it’s my house you bitch … you’re nothing to me. You mean nothing to me.”
Bellinge then speeds away and is heard on the dashcam screaming, “Yeah, how about you f—ing hurry up then c—face … move over you f—head. Yeah, then what? You pussy dick, f— you, f— that bitch”, before the vehicle crashes.
The footage was played to a packed Perth courtroom as part of Bellinge’s sentencing on Tuesday after he was charged with dangerous driving, reckless driving, dangerous driving occasioning bodily harm and manslaughter, to which he pleaded guilty.
Bellinge sat in the dock crying as the footage was played.
The Uber driver, Mohammed Usman, was in attendance and left the room while the recording was aired. Members of Pearce’s family did the same.
The obstetrician had been to watch the football that day with friends and drank beer, wine and spirits, but claimed he was not sure of the quantities he consumed.
Bellinge later felt compelled to visit his children and drove to the family home, pulled up in the driveway, and then changed his mind and sped off while ranting angrily at other drivers and his wife.
“He couldn’t understand why she left,” Bellinge’s lawyer told the court on Tuesday.
“He had thoughts of suicidal ideation but always pulled back because of his children.”
The court was told Bellinge tried to repair the relationship, engaged in counselling and was later diagnosed with depression and prescribed both an anti-depressant and diazepam to help him sleep.
But he claims the medication had an adverse affect causing “anxiety, agitation, insomnia, short temper, muscle spasms and alike”.
The court was told it was “a cascading series of events exacerbated by the medication and, of course, his intoxication” that led Bellinge to crash into Usman and Pearce at 116km/h on Birdwood Parade in Dalkeith around 10pm on February 15, 2025.
The speed limit on the street was 50km/h. In the seconds before the crash, Bellinge was travelling at 138km/h.
Pearce died almost instantly.
Usman suffered catastrophic injuries and spent two months in hospital, enduring operations on two broken legs and a broken arm.
He used a walking stick to move while in court on Tuesday.
“What a f—wit … I’m so sorry … I’m so sorry everyone,” Bellinge can be heard saying as his dash cam continued recording after the impact.
Bellinge can be heard climbing out of the car and groaning while passersby comes to help.
“I’m so sorry everyone,” Bellinge repeats.
An empty rum bottle was found in his car and his blood alcohol reading was 0.183 at the scene – almost four times the legal limit.
The court heard Bellinge told police from his hospital bed, where he was treated for spinal injuries, that he was not as angry as they suggested he was.
“I started driving away, I was driving away from my family. I felt awful. My emotions went bananas, but I don’t think I was angry per se. But I was unhappy,” he said.
He said he remembered a car “coming in front of me” and claimed he tried to go around it. But Usman’s Honda Jazz was almost stationary when Bellinge’s Jaguar ploughed into it. The doctor had hit a curb, the court was told, and lost control.
The court heard Bellinge could not recall how much alcohol he had consumed and “thought that after a while it would have washed out”.
He said he had wanted to go and see his children but then stopped in the driveway and then thought, “You’re being an idiot. Go home”.
Bellinge told police he was driving with tears in his eyes, which impaired his vision.
The court heard Bellinge grew up in comfort, an idyllic Perth Hills childhood followed by a private high school education at Guildford Grammar.
But the court was told he struggled with his parents’ divorce, which played into his inability to cope with his own marital issues.
He spent his early adulthood struggling to find his way, with the court hearing he began and abandoned multiple university degrees and embarked upon a career as a bricklayer before eventually graduating as a physician as a mature student.
Soon after, he launched his own clinic and was in high demand and revered by his colleagues for his skill and competence.
But they noted a change in him around the time his marriage began to collapse.
His two young children have developmental delays, the court was told, which contributed to stress within the couple’s relationship, but “nothing prepared him” for hearing from his wife that she wanted a separation.
Bellinge will be sentenced on Tuesday afternoon.