Benjamin Clancy: Sunbury speedster spent three weeks in coma following horror crash

A magistrate has decided that hoon Benjamin Clancy’s injuries were so severe from a motorbike crash that he’d received all the punishment needed.

Benjamin Clancy

A man who illegally drove a motorbike into a tree at high speed in Sunbury has been forced to relearn how to walk, talk and eat, after suffering what a Local Court has heard was a “cruel injury”.

Benjamin Clancy pleaded guilty in the Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, following a 2019 incident which police said left him in an induced coma for three weeks.

Senior Constable Tim Luscombe told the court that Clancy, who now survives with the assistance of his mother in Corowa in rural NSW, was seen at 1.22am on April 28 driving a black motorcycle in Sunbury, before he crashed into a tree.

Police recorded gravel skid marks more than 10m in length, debris from the motorbike as far as 10m from the scene of the crash and a rear tyre that was “bald” and unroadworthy.

Senior Constable Luscombe told the court that the motorbike had been stolen on May 13, 2018, and that Clancy had never held a motorbike licence.

He said the exact speed Clancy was driving at was unknown, however he told the court that the witnesses were originally in front of Clancy before he overtook them.

Blood samples from the Royal Melbourne Hospital confirmed the presence of meth in his system, Senior Constable Luscome said, while X-rays confirmed he had suffered multiple skull fractures.

Sinead Allan, for the defence, said because of the extent of his injuries her client “didn’t remember much” of his life prior to the accident, and said that following his coma he needed “to relearn everything”.

Ms Allan said among other things Clancy still struggles to make a cup of tea, while he now passes his time watching television with his mother.

“The protection of the community is no longer a necessary consideration,” she said.

In sentencing Clancy to a six-month adjourned undertaking, Magistrate Urfa Masood said “you’ve done something that’s had very serious consequences”.

Ms Masood said his life without no balance, co-ordination or memory had been described as “cruel” in a letter provided to the court by his mother.