New development in case of killer truckie Timothy Walsh

A Court of Appeal decision has been handed down in the case of a truckie who was responsible for a fatal collision in 2019.

A truckie responsible for a fatal 2019 collision has succeeded in having his sentence slashed.

Timothy Lindsay Walsh, 38, was behind the wheel of a B-double prime mover when he lost control and caused the truck to jackknife on the Western Highway near the small Victorian town of Pimpinio at around 2am on July 2019.

Minutes later a passenger bus struck the upturned semi-trailers, fatally injuring driver Emil Pich and injuring multiple passengers.

Last year Walsh, from South Australia, was sentenced to 14 years in jail with a non-parole period of eight years for culpable driving causing death and negligently causing serious injury.

He admitted to driving while fatigued, and the initial trial was told he had been driving continuously for four hours and had a small amount of methylamphetamine in his system.

Timothy Walsh has succeeded in having his sentence reduced on appeal after causing a fatal truck collision in country Victoria in 2019. Picture: David Caird

A sleep specialist gave evidence that Walsh had four hours sleep in the 24 to 48 hours before the crash, with it occurring in a “circadian nadir” for regular night sleepers.

The specialist concluded that Walsh would have been experiencing “substantial sleepiness” at the time of the crash, with prosecutors arguing he had lapsed into a “micro sleep” prior to the truck drifting off the road, causing Walsh to make a sharp right turn.

But Walsh lodged an appeal against his sentence, arguing that his moral culpability was medium to low, rather than high, and his total effective sentence of 14 years was “manifestly excessive”.

Bus driver Emil Pich died at the scene.

In a judgment handed down in the Victorian Court of Appeal on Tuesday, justices Richard Niall and Karin Emerton agreed that the sentence imposed on Walsh was manifestly excessive.

While agreeing that Walsh’s moral culpability was high, justices Niall and Emerson concluded that the totality of his punishment exceeded what was necessary to address “punishment, denunciation and general deterrence”.

The court imposed a revised sentence of 11 years, with a non-parole period of seven years.

Originally published as New development in case of killer truckie Timothy Walsh