Katie Dokmanovic and other road trauma victims demand tougher penalties for killer drivers
A grieving mum whose 18-year-old son was killed in a horror Christmas Eve road crash in 2020 is demanding tougher penalties for drivers whose reckless disregard for the law ends in tragedy.
Police & Courts
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For five days Katie Dokmanovic was left to imagine the state of her son’s body as he lay in a Sydney morgue.
There was no possibility the sight of her 18-year-old boy could be anything short of harrowing.
The devastated mum had already seen the state of the car that Nicholas was travelling in when it crashed at high speed into a power pole and split in two in Western Sydney on Christmas Eve 2020.
“Had he been decapitated? I saw how hard the car hit the pole. There was nothing left,” the devastated mum told The Saturday Telegraph this week.
“I thought ‘What am I faced with when I walk into that morgue and identify him?’.
“My son’s photo was plastered across TV, in print, everywhere without us even going to the morgue, without us even saying ‘Yes that’s him’.
“The morgue was closed for the Christmas break so I had five days to wait and imagine.”
Christmas will never be the same again.
“Imagine this being your child, imagine walking in our footsteps and waking up Christmas Day to find your son dead; having to then pick out a coffin instead of Christmas presents, funeral songs instead of Christmas carols, what clothes to bury him in or cremate him in?” Ms Dokmanovic said.
“Did he want to be buried or cremated? Have you ever had that conversation with your child?
“Imagine having to make those decisions.”
Ms Dokmanovic has shared her pain, even more raw as the Christmas season approaches, in the hope it will resonate with anyone considering getting behind a wheel and “using a car as a weapon”.
Nothing else seems to be working, she says, as more and more young people die on NSW roads since she lost her son in a crash — “not an accident”.
Every day she drives past the scene of the most recent deadly crash, where two young boys lost their lives at Ashcroft.
Braydan Collier, 13, and his best mate Kaine Bell, 14, were passengers in a car that crashed into a telegraph pole on Monday.
In the seconds after the crash the adults in the front seat, Nicholas Thew, 27, and Anthony Morris, 23, both allegedly fled the scene. After more than 24 hours on the run the pair handed themselves in to Wetherill Park Police Station. The driver is before the courts.
In another case all too close to home, Ms Dokmanovic’s younger son attended school with Ernesto Kauffman, 15, who was killed along with his sister Aline, 24, after a crash involving a stolen car.
Johnson Kokozian, 20, was arrested at Liverpool police station about 18 hours after police allege he was behind the wheel of a stolen Mercedes Benz which hit and killed the siblings. He remains before the courts.
So far this year 303 people have died on NSW roads, compared to 236 for the same period last year.
“Seeing these things happen time and time again, it’s traumatic, triggering, every time you turn on the news, flick through your social media, you just go ‘Why?’,” Ms Dokmanovic said.
“What is happening out there that everybody thinks it’s okay to travel at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100km above the speed limit?
“What is that entitlement that they think it’s OK? There are no repercussions. They act as though no one else is on the road but them, they go about their business with no regard for any other person on the road.”
Ms Dokmanovic and other mums and dads, brothers and sisters, who have lost someone they love through senseless crashes, are fighting for change.
“In the hope that another family does not have to walk in the same shoes, I want parents to educate their children,” Ms Dokmanovic said.
“I want the legal system to change. It’s not a judicial system, there is no justice in NSW, it’s a legal system, that’s it,” she said.
“I want the community mindset to change. We are giving 16 and 17-year-olds access to a loaded gun and then when they do the wrong thing, we are not holding anyone to account for the consequences.”
Ms Dokmanovic said the community was now more aware of the domestic violence epidemic, with people willing to ring police if they hear or see someone in danger.
“And as a community we stand up against street violence,” she said.
“Someone being king hit is now the victim of a coward punch, the crime has its own law, because collectively we have seen the effects of these incidents.
“We should have the same mindset for road crime. It’s not an accident to go 100km over the speed limit, it’s not an accident to run away from police and initiate a police pursuit.
“It’s not an accident to drink and drive or drive with drugs in your system. These things are not an accident and they need to be called out for the criminal acts that they are.”
The P-plate driver responsible for the crash that killed Nicholas, 20-year-old Savyo Khamou, has been jailed for a minimum of two years and seven months.
The court was told he was pushing speeds of 160km/h during a police chase on Camden Valley Way.
Just three months earlier, he had copped a fine for speeding 15km/h over the limit, and had only held his licence for nine months.
Ignoring police sirens indicating Khamou to stop, he instead turned left onto Heath Rd and after a 2.7km pursuit struck a power pole on a dimly lit Eastwood Rd.
“He was given leniency for pleading guilty. If he was remorseful he would have apologised and made some attempt to look me in the eye when I made my victim impact statement at court,” Ms Dokmanovic said.
“The sentence doesn’t reflect the crime and that’s the situation with so many of these cases.
“We need change.”
Ms Dokmanovic and her family are preparing to spend Christmas Eve at the crash site. Then Christmas Day, the day that used to be a family day full of laughter, is a “non-event”.
“It’s the worst time of year for us. Everywhere you look everyone is buying presents, this sense of excitement in the air about families getting together.
“We don’t have that any more.”
‘THIS IS A LESSER SPECIES OF HOMICIDE’
The NSW judicial system treats serious road crime as a “lesser species of homicide”, placing far too little value on human life, the Road Trauma Support Group NSW says.
The group, formed by family members of road trauma victims including Katie Dokmanovic, has submitted a preliminary submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission calling for a review of serious road crime in NSW.
“Reckless indifference to others is vehicular homicide and the laws and punishment should reflect it,” the group said in its submission.
“ Sentencing outcomes for serious road crimes, however they may be derived, often result in many offenders receiving no custodial sentence whatsoever. The same cannot be said for homicides by other means.
“These outcomes are completely out of alignment with broader community expectations. Our members can provide many harrowing testimonies to evidence this.”
The group is calling for a charge of vehicular homicide when a driver kills someone through their criminal act and harsher penalties for driving while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Road Trauma Support Group: www.roadtraumasupportnsw.org, or phone 1800 808 384
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