A grieving father gathered the shattered remnants of his daughter’s jewelry from the police, the only tangible memories left of her final evening.

“They mirrored her body – fractured, scarred, and distorted,” Michael Hodder recounted emotionally in court, struggling to hold back tears.

His youngest daughter, Elise Hodder, a model from Melbourne, met a tragic end last year, a victim of a driver under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

At just 24, Elise was on the brink of a promising modeling career, having recently appeared in Vanguard magazine and preparing for a lucrative opportunity in Sydney, when her life was abruptly ended.

Celebrating her best friend’s birthday, Elise was fatally struck and trapped beneath Connor Mathiasson’s Commodore, ultimately losing consciousness and her life.

Two police officers talked to her as she lay under the vehicle “fighting for her life” but “struggling to survive”, the County Court in Melbourne was told today.

Hodder’s mother said the nature of her daughter’s death had made her grief “unbearable”.

“To learn Elise had been trapped under the car for hours … I was overcome with grief,” Pauline Hodder told the court as tears streamed down her face.

“What a violent, cruel ending for my gentle, loving girl.”

She had dropped Hodder off at a friend’s house in Collingwood, and they headed to her best friend Emma Sword’s birthday party on the evening she was killed.

“She looked me in the eye and said, ‘You’re a special woman, mum, I love you’,” Elise’s mother said.

“I had no idea this was the last time I would ever see my daughter alive.”

She said it was “utterly traumatic” to recall police knocking on their door at 6am the next morning.

The devastated parents then had to identify Hodder’s body, while Mathiasson had already been freed on bail.

“To then see her at the coroner’s court, to hug and kiss her while knowing her offender was free, was unbearably cruel,” Elise’s father said.

Mathiasson, who has only spent one day behind bars after he was granted bail the day after the October 13, 2024, crash, also hit Swords and injured her when he drove into the group of friends inside a Kooyong car park.

Dozens of Hodder and Sword’s loved ones filled the courtroom today as Mathiasson faced a pre-sentence hearing where emotional statements were read about the impact of his offending.

The then 23-year-old had been drinking at a rave and had cocaine and cannabis in his system when he got behind the wheel.

A marked police car was inside the car park at the time, and two officers said they saw Mathiasson’s vehicle drive “straight into a group of pedestrians”, with Hodder dragged underneath the car and becoming stuck.

Swords told police she remembered walking and then getting hit “really hard” by the Commodore.

“I feel like I heard a car rev really loud, but it just hit me so quick – I didn’t see anything, I just felt it,” she said in a statement read by prosecutor Neill Hutton.

“It all happened so quick, we had only been out of the car for like 30 seconds.”

The officers ran over and blocked Mathiasson’s Commodore from leaving and asked why he did it.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it,” Mathiasson replied, the prosecutor said.

Police then turned to Hodder, who was still conscious but “fighting for her life” underneath the Commodore.

“With the weight of the vehicle on her, I felt all I could do was talk to her. My thoughts at the time were that her injuries were probably not survivable,” one officer said.

Mathiasson has pleaded guilty to culpable driving causing Hodder’s death and negligently causing serious injury to Swords, who suffered broken ankles.

He is facing up to 20 years behind bars.