Grieving family members call for tougher laws for killer drivers
Heartbroken families whose relatives were killed in horrific road crashes are calling for an overhaul of sentencing laws, saying the killer drivers got off too lightly.
Police & Courts
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Three heartbroken families whose loved ones were killed in horrific road crashes are calling for changes to the state’s “pathetic” sentencing laws.
Tannous Daher, Barney Wakes-Miller and Aaron Vidal all suffered fatal injuries at the hands of three criminally culpable drivers.
Barney and Aaron’s killers escaped jail time, while Tannous’s killer was sentenced to three years and eight months in jail.
Their families say the courts treated their loved ones’ lives as “worthless”, and want mandatory minimum custodial sentences established to adequately punish drivers who are responsible for deadly crashes.
As members of the Road Trauma Support Group, the families are lobbying for the introduction of mandatory manslaughter charges for using a car as a weapon, and minimum sentencing guidelines, as well as support for victims’ families.
Aaron Vidal was a young police officer who followed in the footsteps of his father, Chief Inspector David Vidal, and the pair worked alongside each other.
Aaron was 29, engaged to the love of his life, Jess, and they had a baby on the way.
On June 18, 2020, he was riding his motorbike in Rouse Hill when he came across Tommy Balla, 38, who was on a phone call using his car’s Bluetooth system.
Balla turned right after an arrow had turned red — and smashed straight into Aaron.
The young constable was killed in the collision.
He never got to meet his baby boy Etzio, who was born just a few months later.
“I’ve been to many road crashes and fatal crashes … I’ve seen the policing side of identifications at the morgue, but once you are forced into the side of the victim you get a whole new perspective,” Aaron’s father David said.
“I was crippled with grief; it was incredibly traumatic and continues to be.”
In August last year, NSW District Court judge Stephen Hanley sentenced Balla to a two-year intensive corrections order, to be served as home detention, after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving occasioning death.
The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed the sentence, labelling it “manifestly inadequate”.
The DPP wanted the punishment reviewed on the grounds Balla’s crash was not an accident, but rather a running of a red light. But Justice Stephen Rotham dismissed the appeal in a short hearing at the Supreme Court of NSW last year.
“No sentence would ever be enough for us, but at least give Aaron’s life some modicum of appreciation, some respect with a sentence that reflects the gravity of the crime,” Mr Vidal said.
“The courts found Aaron’s life to be worthless because the sentence was worthless.”
One of the hardest parts of the court process for Mr Vidal and his family was the time judge Hanley spent surmising the impact the crash had on Balla’s life compared to the impact it had on the Vidal family.
“I would say that was harder than the sentence,” Mr Vidal said.
“It was the hardest part for Aaron’s mother too; she walked out before the sentence, she was so disgusted by the lengthy judgment on the impact on Balla’s life.”
It’s for that reason the Road Trauma Support Group is also pushing for a Victim Impact Panel to play a role in sentencing, which would force driving offenders to recognise the lasting and long-term effects of dangerous and substance-impaired driving on victims and their families.
Seventeen-year-old Barney Wakes-Miller was a larger-than-life character, and a talented young artist.
He was in Year 11 and had big plans for his life, but in July 2020 he was killed in a horrific crash at Elanora Heights, on Sydney’s northern beaches.
He was in a car with a drunk P-plater who had received his plates only six weeks prior.
The young and inexperienced driver admitted to doing burnouts and speeding at more than 30km over the limit just before the crash.
His actions caused him to lose control of the car, which slammed into a garden wall outside a house party.
Barney suffered massive head injuries and died 20 minutes later.
The driver pleaded guilty to one count each of dangerous driving causing death (drive under influence) and escaped serving jail time.
Magistrate Sue Duncombe sentenced the driver to a 21-month control order (time in juvenile detention) but immediately suspended it and placed the teen on a 21-month good behaviour bond.
The DPP again appealed — just like in the case of Aaron Vidal — claiming it, too, was manifestly inadequate.
But District Court Judge Clive Jeffreys threw out the appeal, saying “it is quite clear that the death … has had a significant impact on the young person (the driver)”.
Barney’s shattered father Duncan said he and his family were failed by the justice system.
He argued that due to the driver’s intention to get behind the wheel drunk, a harsher punishment should have been imposed.
“The sentence was inadequate for the driver, who through intentional dangerous driving killed my son,” he said.
“There was no deterrent aspect at all to the sentence and, worse, it may even encourage young men to repeat the drinking, speeding, showing-off aspects of the offence safe in the knowledge that they will likely avoid jail and, in a practical sense, avoid any sort of punishment.”
As well as new sentencing laws, Mr Wakes-Miller wants the term “accident” phased out in criminal proceedings surrounding fatal crashes.
Tannous Daher was a grandfather with 20 grandchildren who took pride in his Western Sydney garden.
Aged 83, he had been married for 60 years and had five kids.
One winter’s day in July 2017 he was gardening with his brother-in-law in his Merrylands front yard when a suspended truck driver named Moustaffa Zreika crossed onto the wrong side of the road and ploughed into the two men as they were working on the footpath.
Tannous was dragged 20m under the vehicle.
Tannous’ son Tom said the “brutal” news of his father’s death rocked his family.
“We lost dad in horrific circumstances; no one deserves to die that way,” he said.
Zreika was found guilty at trial, where a jury was told he may have had a seizure at the wheel due to consuming dangerous amounts of the prescription painkiller Tramadol.
Zreika had a history of blackouts dating back to 2014 and had been told by several doctors it would be unsafe for him to drive.
He was found guilty of one count of dangerous driving occasioning death and dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and sentenced to six years jail, but would be eligible for parole after serving four years.
He appealed the sentence and was resentenced to a non-parole period of three years and eight months.
While Zreika’s sentence was one of the higher sentences that have been imposed among members of the Road Trauma Support Group, Mr Daher said it was “pathetic”.
The maximum a judge could sentence such an offender is 10 years.
Mr Daher said Zreika’s sentence showed there was a lack of justice.
“We had to provide dental records to identify Dad,” he said.
“Zreika will be out of jail soon. However, it’s our family that has been sentenced for life. This is not justice. He had a total disregard for the law.
“With his previous driving record it was only a matter of time before he would kill someone. The sentences are pathetic for these serious crimes.”
Also a member of the Road Trauma Support Group, Mr Daher is backing the push for tougher sentences, Victim Impact Panels and lengthy mandatory suspension for drivers who kill someone on the road.
When questioned about the group’s push for tougher sentences, NSW Attorney-General Mark Speakman said the state already had some of the “toughest” driving laws in the country.
Disappointed by that response, Mr Duncan Wakes-Miller said that Mr Speakman was “out of touch and asleep at the wheel”.
Shadow Minister for Roads John Graham said he expected judges to use their discretion to ensure that sentences for road deaths reflected community standards.
KILLER DRIVERS WHO WERE LET OFF LIGHTLY
TROY XERRI
In May, Troy Xerri was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison, with a two-year and four-month non-parole period, after a crash that killed Sydney grandmother Jo Duke.
In 2019, he lost control of his Toyota HiLux, which jumped over the median strip AND crossed onto the wrong side of Blaxland Rd at Eastwood, colliding with two other vehicles. His car smashed into Ms Duke’s Mazda hatchback, killing the 63-year-old.
Her husband Mick labelled the court’s sentence: “Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
CAMERON FORSYTH
Adam Ghoz, 17, was walking to soccer practice on the afternoon of January 7, 2021, when a Kia Carnival crossed two lanes of traffic and ploughed into him on the Hume Highway at Casula in Sydney’s southwest.
The driver of the car, 38-year-old Cameron Forsyth, was high on heroin at the time, and pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated dangerous driving causing death while under the influence of drugs, despite initially lying to police about his heroin use.
Forsyth was jailed for seven years with a non-parole period of four years.
A spokesman for the Ghoz family said: “The justice system let us down.”
SAMUEL DAVIDSON
Last month, the NSW Supreme Court shaved eight years off the sentence handed to a man who fatally mowed down four children – three siblings and their cousin – as they went to buy ice cream at Oatlands.
Samuel Davidson, 30, woke up depressed and was so high from drugs and alcohol he did not recall ploughing into Antony, 13, Angelina, 12, and Sienna Abdallah, 9, and their cousin Veronique Sakr, 11.
He pleaded guilty to seven charges – four counts of manslaughter, two counts of causing bodily harm by misconduct and one of aggravated dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm, and was sentenced to 28 years in jail with a non-parole period of 21 years.
However, in a shock decision, he won an appeal, that jail term was quashed and he was sentenced to just 20 years behind bars and will now be eligible for parole on January 31, 2035.
KEITH LOCKREY
Ninety-year-old Keith Lockrey was spared jail for killing a mum-of-two when his car ploughed into tables outside a Sydney cafe where she was enjoying a morning coffee.
Lockrey pleaded guilty to negligent driving causing death and causing grievous bodily harm, and was sentenced to 13 months’ imprisonment to be served by way of an intensive corrections order in the community, after mum-of-two Liz Albornoz was killed in the North Epping crash in 2020.
MAHA AL-SHENNAG
Maha Al-Shennag avoided jail time after she drove her car into a Sydney school, killing two children — with a judge labelling the incident a “freakish accident”.
Al-Shennag was dropping her child off at Banksia Road Public School in Greenacre in November 2017 when the Toyota Kluger she was driving careened out of control and into a classroom. Two boys aged eight and nine were killed in the horrific crash.
She was sentenced to an aggregate sentence of three years imprisonment to be served in the community for three counts of dangerous driving, two occasioning death, and one of causing grievous bodily harm.
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