Mum who smashed through classroom, killing two boys, spared prison after family forgives her
Maha Al-Shennag, who accidentally pressed on her 4WD‘s accelerator and smashed through a classroom, killing two school boys, has learned her fate in court.
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A woman who killed two young boys when she smashed her two-tonne 4WD through a Sydney classroom has been spared prison after grieving parents forgave her in emotional court scenes.
Volunteer teacher and charity worker Maha Al-Shennag, 56, was dropping her son at Banksia Road Public School when she lost control of her Toyota Kluger on the morning of 7 November, 2017.
Al-Shennag had been cruising up the school driveway at about 20km/hr when she reached down into the footwell to retrieve some plastic water bottles that were sloshing around in the car, the NSW District Court found on Tuesday.
Al-Shennag mistook the Kluger‘s accelerator for the brake and, when she pressed down, the massive 4WD roared up the driveway at more than 60km/hr.
“I thought ‘please God, please direct the car into an empty class’. But it was too late,” Al-Shennag told the court at a hearing last month.
The 4WD smashed into a kerb and bounced into the air smashing through the wall of classroom 3T at an estimated 74km/h, Judge Stephen Hanley SC said on Tuesday.
Construction workers heard children screaming as the vehicle ploughed through the building, its engine revving loudly, before it came to a stop among the broken glass and smashed furniture.
Jihad Darwiche, 8, was pulled from beneath the car unresponsive and classmate Andrew Encinas, 9, shortly lost consciousness.
Both boys died of multiple injuries.
Three more injured children were extracted from the carnage and survived their injuries.
The Encinas family watched Al-Shennag wipe away tears as she faced sentencing via videolink.
The Encinas and Darwiche families expressed the enormity of their loss and their grief in “moving” letters to the court.
The Darwiches called it a “very tragic accident” and asked the judge to spare Al-Shennag prison time because it would leave her children without a parent as their father had died in 2016.
Al-Shennag broke down as the Judge recounted the Darwiche family’s enduring forgiveness and support for the woman who had accidentally killed their son.
Almost four years ago, as Jihad’s small green casket was driven to the cemetery, his father broadcast a message from the passenger seat of the hearse calling on the community to rally behind Al-Shennag.
“(The family) want to sit with this lady and talk with her and tell her ‘we forgive you’,” Undertaker and family friend Ahmad Hraichie said, translating the father’s words.
The court, on Tuesday, heard Al-Shennag’s life has been ruined by survivors‘ guilt, flashbacks and PTSD.
The woman known as “the sweetest teacher” by former pupils and neighbours wishes she could turn back time and die in the “freakish” accident herself, rather than the children, Judge Hanley said.
“I believe the guilt and self blame my mother feels every day is greater than any jail sentence - and she will never forgive herself,” Al-Shennag’s adult daughter wrote in a letter to the court.
Crown Prosecutors had refused Al-Shennag’s attempts to plead guilty to two counts of dangerous driving causing death - instead trying to pursue manslaughter convictions.
Judge Hanley said he believed prosecutors had caused significant delays and would not have been able to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that Al-Shennag had committed manslaughter.
Prosecutors ultimately accepted her guilty pleas along with other charges relating to the injuries of three other students.
Judge Hanley found Al-Shennag’s actions to be at the “lowest end” of culpability, noting her clean record, remorse and low chance of reoffending.
She was given a three-year sentence, to be served in the community, with 400 hours of community service and a suspended license.
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