Aaron Vidal crash: Tommy Balla sentenced to two-year home detention order
A man who caused a crash that killed a young cop who was engaged and expecting a child has learnt his fate in court.
Police & Courts
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A man will serve two years of home detention for causing the death of a beloved young police officer and expectant father in a devastating crash last year.
Constable Aaron Vidal was killed as he rode his motorcycle home from work after he slammed into the side of a ute driven by Tommy Balla at Rouse Hill in Sydney’s northwest.
Balla drove through a red light and turned across Constable Vidal’s path at an intersection on Windsor Rd, where the young cop would be pronounced dead on the roadway on June 18, 2020.
Constable Vidal, 28, faced a green light as he rode home to fiancee Jessica Loh, who was pregnant with their first child.
Judge Stephen Hanley on Friday confirmed Balla would be sentenced to a two-year intensive corrections order, to be served as home detention, after he pleaded guilty to and was convicted of dangerous driving occasioning death.
The 38-year-old will only be allowed to leave home for emergencies, work or community service, of which he has been ordered to complete 400 hours.
His driver’s licence was also suspended until June 2024, Judge Hanley told the Parramatta District Court.
Balla had faced a maximum of 10 years in jail, but the judge found the father of two was unlikely to offend, was deeply remorseful and had been living “in his own prison” due to serious mental health issues and public humiliation from media reporting.
At a hearing in July, Judge Hanley ruled the crash happened in a “split second” and that neither man could have seen the other coming.
He found that both men had broken the road rules to varying degrees in the moments before the fatal crash, but Constable Vidal’s “tragic and unnecessary death … occurred as a result of (Balla’s) inattentiveness”.
Balla was talking on the phone via Bluetooth and had a young child in the front seat of his Mitsubishi Triton when he turned across several lanes of traffic into Schofields Rd.
The light he was facing had been red for a full three seconds, although Balla would tell police he believed it was orange at the time.
Witnesses saw Constable Vidal lane filtering at a “fast pace” past cars stopped at the intersection on Windsor Rd just before their light turned green.
It was estimated he was moving at 50 to 60km/h – well above the 30km/h limit for lane filtering – and Judge Hanley found that the crash “would not have occurred if the victim was observing the rules”.
However, the police officer was entitled to believe no vehicle would be illegally travelling across the intersection, Judge Hanley said.
Constable Vidal, a former Army vet, never got to meet his son, Etzio, who was born in January 2021.
His fiancee Ms Loh told the court at an emotional sentence hearing in June that her life was “excruciating” without her partner.
“If not for the actions of the defendant, Aaron would be with me. We would be sitting at home with our baby Etzio together,” she said.
At the time of his death Constable Vidal worked alongside his father, Chief Inspector David Vidal, at Day Street police station in the CBD.
“Aaron is my son and my hero, I will miss him with every remaining breath in my body,” Inspector Vidal told the court in June.
Originally published as Aaron Vidal crash: Tommy Balla sentenced to two-year home detention order
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