A woman whose son was jailed over a motorbike theft that almost cost him his life had to be removed from the courtroom after she lashed out at the judge.
Kathy Penny yelled, “where is the justice for my son?” after District Court Judge Laurence Levy sentenced Ronaldo James Cockie, 20, to two years in prison over the incident.
Ronaldo James Cockie has been sentenced over the theft of a motorbike that left him with a brain injury after it crashed,
Cockie was charged over a series of car thefts, attempted break ins and the theft of the bike from a home in Duncraig in August 2022.
The incident made headlines after the bike’s owner, Debbie Bute, raced after Cockie and his co-offenders to “see where they were going” and ended up crashing her car, causing Cockie to come off the bike.
He was left with a traumatic brain injury from the incident, which his lawyer on Thursday tried to argue should afford him some leniency in his sentencing.
Levy agreed, but said that aggravated burglary came with a minimum term of two years in prison.
Penny stood up from the back of the court and yelled: “How? Where’s the justice? He has suffered enough from what that woman has done.”
Bute was given a suspended sentence for her part in the incident.
“For my son, where is the justice for him?“, Penny continued to yell as her son cried in the dock and orderlies tried to remove her from the court.
“Eye for an eye, ride or die. F--- you.”
Penny was evicted from the courtroom but then re-entered, saying: “You started it, Your Honour. That’s my son.”
The court heard Cockie was on home detention and had cut off an ankle monitor before taking part in the crime spree in August 2022.
He and two co-offenders attempted to break into a home in High Wycombe before stealing a Mitsubishi Triton from another home in the same suburb.
The trio then stole a BMW which was used to attend a home in Duncraig where two motorbikes were taken from the garage.
The home owners, Bute and her husband, woke after hearing a “loud bang”. Bute took off after one of the bikes after she saw them being stolen.
While there was no evidence that Bute made contact with the bike, she lost control of her vehicle and mounted a curb before crashing.
Cockie, who was 18 years old at the time and supposed to be on home detention after he had been arrested over similar offences, also crashed the motorbike and suffered catastrophic injuries including fractured ribs, spine, clavicle and femur, as well as a traumatic brain injury and a collapsed lung.
He would have died were it not for first responders, the court was told on Thursday, but later absconded from Royal Perth Hospital and was re-arrested later that day.
While Cockie had some cognitive impairments before the incident, including a diagnosis of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the crash has left him with an intellectual development disorder.
During his sentencing, Levy said Cockie was a “vulnerable and cognitively impaired person” and said he was satisfied there were good reasons to reduce his sentence.
Cockie, who is already part-way through a three-year sentence for prior offences, was given a nine-month and an eight-month sentence for the attempted burglaries and stealing charges.
Those sentences will be served at the same time as the sentence is currently serving. For the aggravated burglary – the stealing of the motorbike – he was given the minimum term of two years, but it will be served on top of his sentence giving him a combined sentence of five years.
He will be eligible for parole next year.
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