VIC: Year s jail for motorist whose crash killed child

AAP General News (Australia)
08-19-1999
VIC: Year s jail for motorist whose crash killed child

MELBOURNE, Aug 19 AAP - A drug-affected driver who killed a four-year-old boy when he
crashed his car was today jailed for a minimum of one year.

County Court judge Jan Pannam sentenced 22-year-old Dean Donald Waters, of suburban
Broadmeadows, to a maximum term of three years.

The court heard Waters was affected by cannabis and amphetamines when he overturned his car
carrying three passengers on the Western Highway at Melton, on Melbourne's outskirts, on June
3, 1997.

Andrew Ribbons died in the accident. His mother Jeanette Ribbons, a friend of Waters, was
seriously injured.

Mrs Ribbons' other son, Christopher, 7, was unhurt.

But it was Christopher who found the body of his younger brother on the road, the judge
said.

Waters, a disqualified driver at the time, at first tried to cover up his guilt by trying
to persuade the child that it was his mother who had been driving.

Waters also approached Mrs Ribbons in hospital with the same proposition.

This, said the judge, "may have been consistent with a total inability to recognise or cope
with what you had done. But it was heartless and cruel".

"You must have understood, once you had acknowledged you were the driver ... that as a
result of your behaviour a small child died and his mother was seriously injured."

Waters pleaded guilty to one charge of culpable driving, causing death.

At the time of the accident the maximum sentence was 15 years.

The maximum now is 20 years.

AAP sew/er/jnb/br

KEYWORD: WATERS

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