Speeding driver Massimo Rigon to serve sentence on home detention after Mile End crash

A musician who was travelling at up to 130km/h before slamming into a father and his two children in Adelaide’s suburbs has learned his fate in court.

A musician who reached speeds of up to 130km/h “lured” another driver into believing it was safe to turn before smashing into a family on a suburban 60km/h road, a court has heard.

Massimo Ernesto Rigon, 32, of Rostrevor was sentenced in the District Court on Wednesday after earlier pleading guilty to three counts of aggravated causing harm by dangerous driving.

Rigon was speeding along James Congdon Drive, Mile End, about 10.30pm on February 13, 2020, when he smashed into a father who was driving with his two children.

Massimo Rigon arrives at the District Court to be sentenced on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

The father had been planning to turn right from Kintore St onto James Congdon Drive.

In sentencing, Judge Rauf Soulio said SA Police major crash reconstruction expert, Sergeant Mark Fulcher, had concluded the father had commenced his turn right “when it was safe to do so” had Rigon been travelling at the speed limit.

Sergeant Fulcher had also determined Rigon was driving at speeds of up to 130km/h before the crash and between 114-122km/h at the time of the collision.

Judge Soulio said the father “was entitled to assume that an approaching vehicle was travelling at or at least about the speed limit”.

“By travelling at the speed at which you were travelling you effectively lured him into believing that it was safe to turn right,” he said.

He said the father sustained injuries including fractured vertebra, rib and sternum causing significant pain and discomfort. He was off work for four months.

He said the father’s 11-year-old son suffered injuries including a bleed around the brain, air and blood in his chest and missed two months of school. A three-year-old girl suffered a cut lip.

Judge Soulio said the boy, who now no longer plays sport, had physically recovered from the traumatic brain injury which was “the most fortunate outcome”.

He said Rigon was driving home after band practice where he had been drinking, but on countback his blood alcohol level would have been below the legal limit.

The court had earlier heard Rigon, a self employed electrician, was driving his father’s high powered Holden ute and felt “a certain degree of euphoria” after band practice.

Rigon had read aloud an apology to the court at that hearing, saying he “felt incredibly terrible” about what happened.

Judge Soulio said Rigon had also delved into minor criminal offending since the crash due to his guilt.

He said people who committed offending like Rigon’s were often “of otherwise good character” but the “dangers of driving dangerously were well-recognised”.

“Road users have a right to expect that other road users will, in general terms, comply with the speed limits or at least drive at a speed at about the speed limit,” he said.

“Driving at such a speed in what is a residential area with a limit of 60km/h is clearly dangerous.”

He jailed Rigon for three years and set a non-parole period of 18 months to be served on home detention. Rigon was also banned from driving and for five years and ordered to complete 240 hours of community service.