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"Manifestly inadequate": Appeal launched against drug driver's three-month jail term
Aboriginal boy Daemarius Purcell-Appo was crushed by an US-style Ram 1500 truck. The drug driver responsible was sentenced to three months' jail.
Published 21 March 2024 5:42am
Updated 21 March 2024 11:24am
By Laetitia Lemke
Source: SBS News
Image: Daemarius was killed by a drug driver. (Supplied)
Warning: this article contains the name and image of someone who has died
Darleen Appo is an Indigenous grandmother from the Northern Territory, navigating a minefield of grief and trauma, both her own and that of her children.
Just before Christmas in 2022, a drug driver accidentally crushed her 11-year-old grandson Daemarius as he walked from a suburban corner store with his uncle.
The primary school student was on holiday in Darwin when he was killed.
Driver Wayne Peter Hunt pleaded guilty to one count of dangerous driving causing death in the NT Supreme Court in January 2024.
Police at the scene of the incident on 20 December 2022. Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
Darleen was confident justice would be served but sat in the courtroom horrified as Hunt was sentenced to three months in jail and nine months of home detention.
She wept as she left the court, still gripping her unread Victim Impact Statement. She said she felt unable to risk sharing it on the day due to the toll it could take on her family.
"I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in jail, but I don’t want you to walk free from what you’ve done," Darleen's statement reads.
With the window for appealing the sentence closing, she felt she had no choice but to share her letter.
So how do we live? We live with great pain, great heartache, and great anger, but it doesn’t change anything.Darleen Appo
"I have had professional counselling, it helped a little, but never changed a thing … not my life, not my pain, not my disconnection from this world or disconnection from my life," Darleen writes.
"But yet you still have a life, is it happy? Mine is not and nor is my family’s.
"So how do we live? We live with great pain, great heartache, and great anger, but it doesn’t change anything.
"My boy can’t come back home."
Shattered lives
Darleen says the accident which claimed her grandson has also shattered the lives of her children.
She has lost the relationship she had with them due to grief.
'[Wayne Peter Hunt], you are the one who gave my daughter and (her) family, my son, and my families a life sentence, one without parole," Darleen writes in her statement.
At the time of the accident, 55-year-old Hunt was driving a ute that he wasn’t licensed to operate. Hunt was also under the influence of cannabis.
What the cameras saw
Daemarius' last moments were captured on CCTV. Footage of the incident was played in court as part of sentencing submissions.
Hunt can be seen moving in and out of his American full-size pickup. He is parked by the shopfront door and making a series of small reverses to try to reach a bottle of iced coffee that has fallen and rolled under the vehicle.
As Daemarius steps onto the footpath, the truck lurches forward, pinning him between the bull bar and the shopfront wall.
It takes more than eight seconds for Hunt to reverse.
The boy's visibly distraught uncle can be seen desperately trying to save the 11-year-old, but Daemarius has suffered "catastrophic crush injuries" and dies on the pavement.
Grandmother Darleen Appo reads a letter she wrote to the drug driver responsible for her grandson's death Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
“But this is not his doing nor his fault, it’s yours.”
'Unspeakable grief'
The way Daemarius suffered before his death causes his grandmother unspeakable grief, "how you took my grandson, in a horrific way, one that could have been avoided, one that could have not happened if you would have obeyed the road rules," Darleen writes.
Acting Justice Meredith Huntingford declined to comment on the appeal but said in her sentencing remarks getting the balance right was "fraught with difficulty".
The truck that crushed Aboriginal primary school student Daemarius Purcell-Appo is taken into evidence. Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
"In 2022, 52 people were killed on NT roads … the NT has Australia’s highest road death toll per head of population.
"There is, on the one hand, a very great injury and grief suffered by the victim and their family.
"On the other hand, there remains the need to temper the community demand for deterrence, punishment, and denunciation, with an appropriate regard to the particular circumstances of the offending and the offender's personal circumstances."
Hunt had been in two significant accidents before the one that killed Daemarius, including one in 2008 where his leg had to be amputated below the knee.
The 55-year-old was licensed to drive, but only under specific conditions. The vehicle had to be automatic and modified, with the accelerator pedal positioned left of the brake to accommodate his prosthetic lower-right leg. The truck Hunt was driving had not been modified to meet those conditions.
Wayne Peter Hunt walks from the NT Supreme Court before being sentenced for one count of dangerous driving causing death Source: SBS News / Laetitia Lemke
"Your ability to drive was impaired because you were under the influence of THC (the main psychoactive component of cannabis) at the time," Huntingford said in sentencing.
"The level of impairment was … equivalent to what would have occurred on consumption of alcohol for somewhere in what is known as the low range … your decision-making reaction times were impaired.
"The fact that you were driving an unsuitable vehicle also contributed to the accident.
"Your disability meant you had less dexterity and control than would otherwise have been the case."
But Huntingford also took into account Hunt’s good references, clean record and early guilty plea.
"The plea is an acceptance of responsibility and demonstrates your willingness to facilitate the course of justice ... it's also some indication of remorse," Huntingford said.
"At the scene, you did not try to flee and you awaited the arrival of the police.
"I think that the possibility that you would offend in this way again is extremely low."
There is a sting in the sentencing for Darleen. The impacts of her grandson’s death remain a daily terror for her and she doesn't feel the punishment fits the crime.
Daemarius Purcell-Appo had been visiting his terminally ill grandfather in Darwin when he was killed outside a Moulden supermarket. Source: Supplied
"My grandson consumes my life more than ever, and I feel selfish sometimes for my other grandchildren … I am unable to function normally.
"[Wayne Hunt] You chose to drive, my grandchild doesn’t drive, never will.
"He won’t have a girlfriend or get married, he won’t have children, he will never be able to do the things you or me have done, or experience life because you chose to drive.
"You’ve left not just only my grandson's life gone, but the rest of mine and his family's life shattered and in pain."
Notice of Appeal released by NT Supreme Court
The Director of Public Prosecutions has now launched an appeal.
In NT Supreme Court documents outlining the grounds of appeal, the DPP Mr Lloyd Babb SC said the judge made a mistake when she found Hunt’s time in prison would be “considerably more onerous” than others because of his disability
“That finding was not open on the evidence,” Mr Babb said.
“The learned sentencing judge erred in imposing a head sentence that was manifestly inadequate in all the circumstances.”
He said it was also a mistake to suspended the “manifestly inadequate” three year sentence, after three months served in prison and nine in home detention.
An appeal date is yet to be published.
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