“If you hit anything at all, you stop and check. You can’t simply make assumptions like I wonder what that was, cause in this case it was a human being who could have been seriously injured,” Magistrate Michael O’Brien told a defendant in Young Local Court last week.
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With those words Mr O’Brien convicted Angus Rudd of Pittstone Road Young, fined him $600, disqualified him for 12 months and handed down a 12 month good behaviour bond for an incident that occurred on May 30.
“It takes real courage to do the right thing and sometimes the hard thing is the right thing to do,” Magistrate O’Brien said as he sentenced the 19-year-old for colliding with a local man and leaving the scene of the accident.
Rudd faced the charges of negligent driving (no death or grevious bodily harm) and fail to stop and assist after impact cause injury for the incident.
According to the facts submitted to the court on May 30 the victim was crossing Lovell Street when Rudd who was driving his ute towards McLerie Street struck the victim on the driver side of the vehicle taking off the side wing mirror. The victim fell to the ground before Rudd drove away without stopping to help the man.
A number of witnesses stopped and assisted the victim before emergency services were called and he was transported to Young Hospital.
Police attended and a crime scene was established at the accident site. Detectives attended the hospital and spoke to the victim before he was transferred to Wagga. The wing mirror found at the scene was taken by police and a number of witnesses were spoken to.
About 5.30pm on May 31 police attended Rudd’s address and saw the vehicle in the driveway was missing its a side mirror and had a baseball cap covering the area where the mirror should be.
When police spoke to Rudd and put the allegation to him he became instantly upset, admitted that he was the driver at the time of the accident and said, “I just panicked.”
The vehicle was seized by police and Rudd attended the police station where he admitted that he was the driver and that he knew that he had collided with something but he wasn’t sure what. He said he panicked and drove from the scene, that he was unable to see clearly at the time due to his windows fogging up and because of the rain.
As a result of the collision the victim fractured his left leg and had a number of abrasions.
