Salim Mehajer sentenced over assault of taxi driver
SALIM Mehajer has been placed on a three-year good behaviour bond and forced to undergo anger management after being convicted of assaulting a taxi driver and smashing a woman’s mobile phone during a night out at The Star casino.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
TROUBLED former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has copped his second criminal conviction in a week after being sentenced for assaulting a taxi driver and smashing a woman’s mobile phone.
Magistrate Vivien Swain convicted Mehajer and ordered he be placed on a three-year good behaviour bond and undergo anger management saying the offending was in the “spur of the moment” and “from loss of temper”.
On Monday Mehajer, 31, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and damage and destroy property outside The Star casino on April 2 last year.
He made the plea deal after prosecutors agreed to drop two further charges of larceny and common assault.
Police facts tendered in court state an altercation erupted when Mehajer and his friends were leaving The Star casino at 4.30am and began chatting to four women waiting for an Uber.
The conversation quickly soured and Mehajer said to one woman identified as Klara, “I wasn’t talking to you. I wouldn’t talk to you if you were the last female on earth.”
The facts state another woman, Chiara Lisciotto, began taking a Snapchat video of an ensuing argument on her iPhone.
Mehajer’s friend snatched the phone away, deleted the video and then Mehajer threw it on the ground smashing it.
Mehajer and his friends then jumped into a taxi being driven by Nazir Syed and threw $200 cash at him, telling him to just drive.
Seconds later, however, they changed their minds and requested Mr Syed take them to the main entrance of the casino, asking for $100 back.
As they got out of the taxi on Pyrmont St, Mehajer took Mr Syed’s EFTPOS machine saying, “if you give me $50 back, you will get back these items.”
He then said, “I go crazy in seconds. I am getting angry you f***ing dog,” and threw the EFTPOS machine at Mr Syed’s face, giving him a bloodied nose.
The taxi driver alerted security who contacted police and Mehajer was tracked down at Darlinghurst and arrested.
MORE
MEHAJER ‘SOULMATE’ ACCUSED OVER CAR CRASH
MEHAJER YELLED ‘I GO CRAZY IN SECONDS’
MEHAJER GUILTY OF ASSAULTING JOURNALIST
The next morning when he was released from custody he assaulted Channel 7 journalist Laura Banks as she asked him questions while he was trying to close his car door.
Last week he was convicted for that offence with no further penalty.
Mehajer’s lawyer Phillip Boulten SC told Ms Swain that Mehajer, “lost his cool,” that night.
“It can simply be said to be a loss of control which he does sincerely regret,” Mr Boulten said.
Ms Swain asked Mr Boulten if alcohol was a factor in the offending.
“There is no evidence to suggest that,” he said.
Mr Boutlen suggested that Ms Swain could sentence him without imposing a criminal conviction but the magistrate disagreed.
She said the fact that Mehajer chose to destroy the phone after the video which had caused him distress was deleted showed he acted out of anger.
She also noted that under the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act taxi drivers were classed as “vulnerable people” who “are entitled to go about their business without being assaulted.”
Ms Swain said this was an aggravating factor in the offending.
She sentenced him to a three-year good behaviour bond during which he must undergo supervision from Community Corrective Services and undergo anger management counselling.
He was also ordered to pay $614 compensation to the victims for the destroyed phone and EFTPOS machine.
Mehajer had originally pleaded not guilty to assaulting the taxi driver and destroying the phone and the case had been set down for a hearing.
However that hearing was delayed twice. The first time was in October last year when he was involved in a car crash on the way to court.
The second time was in January when his lawyer Brett Galloway dramatically withdrew on the morning of the hearing saying he had an “ethical dilemma”.
Mehajer was arrested over the October car crash and charged with perverting the course of justice and conspiring to cheat or defraud his car insurer.
He is in custody on those charges after being refused bail.