THE MAN who caused the crash that killed two teenage girls on a horror stretch of the New England Highway has again been spared a jail term after the prosecution appealed the “inadequacy” of a 300-hour community service order he received in the local court.
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For the families of Tori Earl, 18, and Kendall Burke, 19, it was their last hope that 42-year-old Damien Bullen would receive a custodial sentence over the crash at Whittingham on May 14, 2015. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions had taken the uncommon approach of launching an “inadequacy appeal” after Bullen was fined $1500, suspended from driving for 18 months and ordered to complete 300 hours of community service in Maitland Local Court in May.
On Wednesday in Newcastle District Court, Judge Roy Ellis allowed the inadequacy appeal, quashed the local court sentence and re-sentenced Bullen to a 12-month custodial sentence, but ordered that it be suspended.
He also extended Bullen’s disqualification period to two years off the road.
He might not have been sent to jail, but the families were pleased Bullen’s punishment was increased and relieved the two-year saga was over. “No sentence will bring the girls back,” Ebony Earl, Tori’s sister-in-law, said.
“But today’s suspended jail sentence and increased license suspension period was more appropriate than the original sentence.”
Judge Ellis said Bullen’s negligence amounted to his “failure to recognise the situation in front of him and recognise he needed to apply his brakes”.
But said the consequences of that negligence was severe, with two young lives lost. Nonetheless, he noted Bullen had a strong subjective case and had already completed 145 of his mandated 300 hours of community service when ordering that the 12-month jail term be suspended on the understanding he enter into a good behaviour bond.
Bullen was in March found guilty of negligent driving after a hearing, with Magistrate Ron Maiden finding he had “failed to slow his vehicle sufficiently” and had impacted heavily with the rear of Ms Earl’s car in the eastbound lanes of the New England Highway, forcing her car into the path of an oncoming semi-trailer.
The crash occurred in a 100km/h zone and on a section of road just over a crest where the lanes suddenly merged from two to one.
Ms Earl and Ms Burke both died at the scene.
Ms Earl had passed her provisional driver’s licence test on the day of the crash.
This article first appeared in the Newcastle Herald as No jail again in fatal crash.
