Boy accused of T-boning a car with a mum and two kids inside handed bail again

A boy who was allegedly joy-riding with mates when he crashed a stolen car into a car with a mum and two kids inside had been released from custody one day earlier.

A boy who allegedly crashed a stolen car into a young family in Berwick while joy-riding with mates despite being on eight sets of bail has been handed bail again.

It’s been revealed that the boy accused of T-boning a car with a mum and two kids inside had been released from custody just 20 hours before the April 9 crash on charges of car theft and leading a police pursuit.

A lawyer for the boy, who is in state care, told the children’s court on Thursday that he acknowledged “the decision he made was a fun one but it wasn’t very smart”.

As the boy learned he’d be released from youth detention, he held his hands in prayer above his face while his girlfriend in the court – ordered not to associate with him – called out, “I love you” as he was taken away.

The boy was allegedly joy-riding with mates when he crashed the stolen car in Berwick.

It came after the boy was warned off for “eyeballing” his co-accused and girlfriend – both in court despite non-association orders – after he was seen making gestures and faces at the pair.

The court heard that before the horror crash that was caught on CCTV, the boy was bailed by a magistrate about 20 hours earlier.

Facing charges of stealing a car from a gym and leading a police chase while on seven counts of police bail, he was released at 2.27pm on April 8.

But within an hour of being back at his residential care unit, he’d run away, then reoffended “almost immediately”.

A screengrab from a video taken moments before the Berwick crash. Picture: Instagram

At 12.30am that night, on April 9, he allegedly stole a car from Narre Warren’s Goodlife gym after “shadowing” a patron and taking a man’s keys inside.

Over the next 10 hours, he and his mates were accused of numerous petrol drive-offs – stealing $27 and $32 of fuel – before driving “erratically” in Berwick, where he allegedly sped through an intersection, smashing into a woman driving two young children who were heading on a playdate, just before 11am.

Two girls, both aged nine, who were in the car later said it was “really scary” and that they “thought they were very selfish and careless”.

The boy told the magistrate from the dock that he’d “written a letter to the victims of the crash”.

“I shouldn’t have … I regret it,” he said, complaining that he didn’t like youth detention, which he described as “horrible”

The boy’s lawyer told the court he’d had a “very salient experience” after the crash that left him hospitalised, and that it “has had an impact on (him)”.

“He did feel traumatised by it, he said his mates could have died, other people could have died.”

It’s understood that four teens fled after the crash but police soon caught up with them.

The magistrate told the boy she was giving him “one last chance” and granted him bail due to his young age and the availability of support.

“If you leave here and do what you did last time, knock off a car … you’ll be back in (youth detention),” the magistrate said.

Police had opposed bail, but Youth Justice supported it.

The boy was ordered to stay away from any gym where he wasn’t a member, not to associate with any co-accused, and to reappear before a children’s court on April 24.