Tyson Morgan, now 21, and Soraya Carlo, 22, watched from the safety of the trees as career criminal Wade Lawrence Jackson, 33, approached a vehicle stopped on a lonely stretch of road at Ryhope, opened the passenger door, raised the axe above his head and started screaming.

"Get out of the f---ing car," Jackson shouted, terrifying the woman inside. When the woman didn't immediately flee, Jackson raised the axe even higher, leaned into the car and repeated himself.

The woman got out of the car and Jackson slid across into the driver's seat before calling out "hurry up, get in" to Morgan and Carlo, who came running out of the bush to join him.

"Get away from the car you slut," Carlo said to the victim before the car sped off.

They headed south on the M1 where they were first involved in a high-speed police pursuit and then collided with another vehicle, hit a light pole and the car did a "complete flip".

Morgan and Carlo were just "following the leader" - or ringleader as it were, Judge Roy Ellis said in Newcastle District Court on Wednesday. Jackson, who was more than a decade older than the others, with a lengthier criminal history, including a series of police pursuits and carjackings in Queensland described by police as "three hours of anarchy", was the one making all the decisions, brandishing the weapon and doing the driving. Jackson was jailed in December for a maximum of seven years, with a non-parole period of four-and-a-half years.

"It seems to me that these two just followed the lead of Jackson," Judge Ellis said. "They were aged 20 and 21 and Jackson was 33. It is clear that they didn't make any decisions but they did participate because they went with him. They could have avoided involvement in this robbery, they could have tried to talk him out of it and that is why they are here."

The victim of the carjacking told the court during Jackson's sentencing last year that she was stopped by the side of Wakefield Road at Ryope for two minutes when she saw a man approaching.

Initially, she thought he needed some help. Then she saw the axe.

"I froze in panic and shock as he climbed into the car," the woman, 37, said through tears. "I believed that he was going to kill me and that I would never see my family again." Judge Ellis took into account the fact that Morgan and Carlo had "followed" Jackson into the crime, as well as their youth and the current COVID-19 situation in correctional centres when sentencing them both to a maximum of three years in jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months.