THREE lives lost, the town of Harcourt torn apart by a brutal revenge attack, and a young man jailed for 18 months.These are the tragic consequences of a high-speed, alcohol-fuelled crash in which a P-plate driver killed his best mate. Brenton David Chaplin banged his head on the bitumen road as his best friend Leigh Charter, 20, lay dead, thrown from his car after it hit a pole in Seaspray in Gippsland in January 2008. Thirteen months later Chaplin was again in mourning when his mother was murdered in a revenge attack by Mr Charter’s father, also called Leigh. Her killer then took his own life. The attack was the culmination of a tragic history involving two North Harcourt families.Another chapter in the Shakespearean-like tragedy was played out in the County Court yesterday when Chaplin, 22, was jailed for four years with a minimum of 18 months over the crash. Among the sobs as prison guards began to lead Chaplin away, Judge Ross Howie urged the warring parties to come together. “If you are able to find in your minds and hearts a measure of forgiveness and kindness, I think that will help,” he said. About 120 members of the Chaplin and Charter families filled every seat of Victoria’s largest courtroom for the sentence. Chaplin, formerly of Harcourt, had pleaded guilty to culpable driving. He was travelling at 126kmh in an 80kmh zone and had a blood-alcohol concentration of .085 when he lost control of his vehicle while changing radio stations and hit a pole. Mr Charter was like a brother to Chaplin, who witnesses said “bawled his eyes out” at the crash scene. Later at the police station, Chaplin spoke of killing himself and said he had done “the worst thing in my life”. In the months that followed, Chaplin and his family tried to send flowers and letters to the Charter family. Flowers were returned chopped up and letters blood-stained, the Chaplins said.Then on February 11 last year, Mr Charter snr took matters into his own hands. He stabbed Chaplin’s mother Wendy to death at her home and injured his father, brother and cousin.Judge Howie described it as a “shocking and terrible act of vengeance”. “Let there be no doubt you are in no way to blame for the death of your mother or for Mr Charter’s other actions,” he told Chaplin during sentencing yesterday.“What he did should be taken into account in sentencing you because it is perceived by you, and by other right-thinking members of the community, as punishment of you for Leigh’s death.” But he said while there was a sense that Chaplin had suffered enough, deterrence of others from driving in such a manner meant a jail term had to be handed out. “There was no doubt you are genuinely remorseful in the fullest sense for what was by no means the worst example of culpable driving,” Judge Howie said, “but Victoria’s highest court had repeatedly stated that general deterrence is of central importance for the offence.”Outside court, family friend and former AFL footballer Doug Hawkins struggled to come to terms with the sentence. “I don’t know the system, but there has got to be compassion for this young bloke,” he told reporters. “Throughout the last two years of his life he has been to hell and back and survived and the rest of his life he is serving two life sentences for his best mate, who was like a brother, and his mum who was murdered in cold blood.”