Teary goodbye to family as Cooper Peatling thrown behind bars for hooning in Dandenong court

A young member of a notorious hooning ring in Melbourne’s southeast has been put behind bars after endangering lives with his driving. Watch the video.

A learner driver’s family has cried in court after he was jailed for hooning in his grandmother’s van.

Cooper Peatling, 25, appeared in the Dandenong Magistrates Court on Thursday where he pleaded guilty to a stack of charges including recklessly endangering injury, property damage, theft of motor vehicle and theft from motor vehicle.

Peatling was involved with the South East Skids — a group that use social media to organise hoon meetups.

The group is notorious for meeting up in industrial areas and performing burnouts, skids and circle work, creating lots of noise and thick black smoke.

Throughout 2021 Peatling was filmed driving in multiple of these hoon events in the south eastern suburbs including Keysborough and Lynbrook.

The court heard Peatling took his grandmother’s white Mazda van to the meet ups and performed hoon driving with others hanging out of his car and hundreds of spectators.

The offending was performed close to pedestrians and other cars and Peatling had covered his rego plates to avoid being identified by police.

The meet ups were of a huge scale with some attracting 50-60 cars, with people filming the hooning to then upload onto platforms like TikTok.

The videos depict a frightening scene, with cars being driven in what Magistrate John O’Callaghan called a “very uncontrolled environment”.

While Peatling was hooning, he also only held a learners’ permit.

The driving could have seriously injured someone.

The court heard when Peatling was questioned about the matters he initially refused to provide police with the pin code to his phone however, eventually did.

Police found all photos and videos had been deleted and the court heard they believed this was to erase any evidence of the hooning behaviour.

They also found a message in Snapchat which had been used to organise a hoon meet up.

It encouraged readers to “F*** [their] Wednesday night dinner plans and gee up to let loose on the streets”.

The court heard Peatling was “well known” in the hoon community and was known as “the one stop tyre shop” as he would often drive car jacks and spare tyres out to other people participating in hooning.

On Thursday Peatling was also facing charges of driving on a learners permit without a supervising driver, and running a stop sign in Kingsbury.

He was also busted performing a “fishtail” which involves speeding to make the two back wheels of a car lose traction, on the Burwood Hwy in Ferntree Gully.

The court heard Peatling had a complete “lack of respect” for the law and not only drove in a way that put the safety and lives of others at risk but he also enabled and “encouraged” other people to do that same.

Multiple rows of the courtroom were filled with Peatling's family who cried as his sentence was read.

Peatling was sentenced to three months in jail and ordered to pay a $3000 fine.

Mr O‘Callaghan said he believed Peatling was “genuinely sorry” for his behaviour but “actions (had) consequences”.

The meetups involved hundreds of people.

“My impression of you is that you’re a good young fella,” he said.

“But, people could have lost their lives. It is not silly behaviour to the person who gets run over.

“You were metres away from something tragic.”

Peatling’s lawyer Maria Cananzi told the court her client had changed his attitude since the offending and had taken steps to remove himself from that path.

Mr O’Callaghan allowed Peatling a moment with his family in the courtroom before he was taken away to custody.