Mum who killed three kids by driving them into Wyndham Vale lake wants to appeal conviction
A WOMAN who killed three of her children and tried to kill a fourth in a Melbourne lake wants to appeal her conviction on the basis of her mental state at the time.
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A WOMAN who killed three of her children and tried to kill a fourth in a Melbourne lake wants to appeal her conviction.
Akon Guode, 38, was last year jailed by the Supreme Court for at least two decades after driving into the Wyndham Vale lake in 2015 with four of her seven children in the car.
Guode’s case returned to the Court of Appeal today after she filed an application for leave to appeal against her 26 ½-year sentence.
AKON GUODE JAILED FOR KILLING HER THREE CHILDREN IN LAKE
AKON GUODE LIKELY TO BE DEPORTED
Her barrister, Julian McMahon SC, attempted to scrap the appeal so he could launch a bid to appeal her conviction on the basis of her mental state at the time.
The application was opposed by the prosecution and Justice Phillip Priest expressed his doubts about it.
“We’re not minded to take the matter out of the list just so another expert can be asked to look at the question of her post natal depression,” he said.
The mother of seven pleaded guilty to the infanticide of her one-year-old son, Bol, and murder of Hanger and her twin brother Madit, four, after she deliberately drove the family car into Lake Gladman in Wyndham Vale on April 8, 2015.
Guode, 39, also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of six-year-old daughter Alual, who survived the crash.
But she never revealed why she did it.
Her barrister Marcus Dempsey blamed the atrocity on an “accruing of pressures and stress”.
She was suffering post natal depression after having Bol, and had little support from the Sudanese community after her affair with the father of the four children, Joseph Manyang.
Growing debt worries may also have been a trigger, a court earlier heard.
Her family desperately wanted to believe her when she first put the crash down to being an accident after she had a dizzy spell and blacked out.
But Mr Manyang, in his victim impact statement tendered in court, said he now knew she was to blame.
“Akon killed our children. I would like to know why she did this,” he said.
Security footage showed her driving past the lake several times before speeding up the kerb, and into it on her sixth trip.
Witnesses who ran to help detailed how they saw the mother make no attempts to save her children.
Her appeal comes despite community condemnation over her sentence in May last year.
Victims of crime advocate Noel McNamara said it was “very light”.
“She killed three children and attempted to kill a fourth, she should have got life in prison,” Mr McNamara said.
At the time, even sentencing judge, Justice Lex Lasry, said the punishment could be seen as “inadequate”.
But he added others may think it was “excessive” because of the mother’s mental state.
The matter is due to return to court for an appeal hearing on August 2.