Vic: Man who drove into school wall wracked with guilt, court

AAP General News (Australia)
12-08-2005
Vic: Man who drove into school wall wracked with guilt, court

By Mariza Fiamengo

MELBOURNE, Dec 8 AAP - A man who injured five children when he drove into a wall at
a primary school was wracked by guilt and remorse over the crash, a Melbourne court was
told today.

Sudanese refugee Taban Gany, 32, was drunk when he drove his car into the brick wall
at Dandenong West Primary School where children were playing on May 19.

The bricks crushed a six-year-old boy, who had to have his right foot amputated, and
an 11-year-old girl, who suffered multiple fractures to her right leg.

Another 11-year-old girl had to have 35 stitches in her head.

Gany, of Doveton, pleaded guilty at the Victorian County Court today to four counts
of negligently causing serious injury and one of reckless conduct endangering life.

His lawyer, Lachlan Carter, told the court his client arrived in Australia in January
2004 without proper education about the dangers of drink-driving.

He had since undergone treatment for his problem and had not drunk alcohol since the
crash, he said.

"He is, in my submission, wracked by guilt and remorse ... as a result of the incident
(he) has changed his life," Mr Carter said.

"This is a man who is completely reformed in response to the horror of what occurred
on the 19th of May."

Mr Carter called for Gany to receive a suspended jail sentence, asked the judge to
show mercy and take into account his particularly harsh background.

He told the court Gany grew up in a country torn apart by civil war, his father was
abducted and killed by torture when he was 19 years old and Gany spent nine years in a
Kenyan refugee camp before coming to Australia.

Crown prosecutor Ray Elston told the court the father-of-two recorded a blood alcohol
reading of 0.175 after the smash - more than three times the legal limit.

Gany, who already had a prior conviction for drink-driving, told police he consumed
four mugs of wine before he began driving to a Dandenong train station, where he intended
to board a train to Brunswick to see his two sick children on the day of smash.

The court heard that before Gany's car hit the school's 1.5 metre-high wall, it struck
two traffic signs, a tree, went through a cyclone mesh fence and hit a fire hydrant.

Mr Elston described Gany's offending as negligence "to the gross degree".

"Here we are fortunate that we don't have a fatality, but we do indeed have four young
victims who have suffered severely," he told the court.

Mr Elston rejected the assertion that Gany was not educated about the dangers of drink-driving,
saying that in his interview with police after the smash he said that he knew it was wrong.

County Court Judge Peter Gebhardt extended Gany's bail until his sentence hearing at
a date to be fixed.

AAP mf/ce/evt/bwl

KEYWORD: GANY NIGHTLEAD

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