Hassan Wraydeh, 42, caused a head-on smash in Punchbowl in 2016, but instead of helping Gina Abdallah, 38, he took his wallet and wiped his driver’s side door in an effort to remove fingerprints before fleeing within minutes.Abdallah, a mother of two, died alone and classified as a “Jane Doe” without ID after suffering a severe head injury in the front passenger seat of the Mitsubishi Lancer.
Wraydeh was sentenced to a non-parole period of five years and three months over the incident last year, but he complained his punishment was “manifestly excessive” and recently launched an appeal in the Supreme Court. Justice Richard Button dismissed Wraydeh’s appeal and said his offence of failing to stop to help his critically injured girlfriend was “deplorable”.“The focus of (Wraydeh) on the removal of scientific evidence and the wallet that could identify him as the driver showed an engaged and self-centred mind — not a panicked or overly distressed one,” the judge said.The decision was welcomed by Ms Abdallah‘s brother Michael Leehmann who said Wraydeh had escaped lightly.
“The nerve of that coward,” Mr Leehmann said.“You have to understand he tore a family apart, left us with deep psychological damage.“He will be free to roam the earth in a couple of years while she is buried six-feet underground and her children, six and eight, will have to grow up now without her — all of us do.”
Mr Leehmann previously said Wraydeh did not phone any of Ms Abdallah’s relatives after the crash, so she died alone. “He did not pick up the phone and text … she died alone as a Jane Doe because she had no identification,” he said. In his decision, Justice Button noted Wraydeh’s shocking driving record, including an incident in 2008 when he travelled up to 180km/h in a 60km/h zone during a police pursuit.“The criminal record of (Wraydeh) demonstrated, in a nutshell, that the criminal justice system had for years been seeking to deter him from driving in such a way that someone could be seriously harmed or killed,” Mr Button said. “That effort failed and precisely what the road rules and the system of punishment for their infringement had been trying to forestall ended up occurring. “The death of (Ms Abdallah) must be seen in the context of a wilful refusal to obey the rules of the road over many years, culminating in tragedy.”
Source link