[BNE] Hit-run killer jailed for four years

Here is an article from The Courier Mail this weekend. It is fully
relevant to the upcoming WoJ/RoS activities. We have to be careful
about assuming the CM is a source of complete information. However, on
the face of it we have:

- four years in jail for dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm

- unlicensed with serial serious traffic offences
- no charge for leaving the scene, with a cyclist dead on the road.

By this standard, you and I would have got off scot-free. Are the road
rules up to the mark? I say not. Also note the headline does not
mention death, just hit-run. Feel free to email the Courier Mail on
http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/ .

Donga

The Courier Mail, 13-14 May 2006

Drink-driver, 23, jailed for hit-run

Leanne Edmistone

A PROMISING football career was destroyed when a Broncos' scholarship
player with a bad traffic history yesterday admit*ted running down a
cyclist while he was drink-driving.

Jason James Walters, 23, had been drinking for hours on Monday, March
21, last year when he knocked down a cyclist riding home from work.
Walters did not stop.

Passers-by found Aaron Patrick Butler, 24, lying in a pool of blood in
the middle of a turning lane on Wynnum Road at Wynnum, his badly
damaged bike metres away.

Walters pleaded guilty before the Brisbane District Court to one count
of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm while adversely
affected by an intoxicating substance.

Prosecutor Chris Minnery said Walters was unlicensed at the time, had
previously been disqualified from driving and had been sentenced to a
15-month suspended jail term just nine months earlier for dangerous
driving.

Judge John McGill SC sentenced Walters to four years' jail, to be
served on top of the activated sentence he is currently serving.