Fatal trial dismissed

Victim’s family shocked

THE family of a Geelong crash victim has been left devastated after a judge dismissed charges against truck driver Gerard Voss, who caused the fatal collision.

County Court Judge Felicity Hampel ruled a jury would be unable to exclude the possibility Mr Voss had succumbed to an undiagnosed sleep disorder when he failed to stop at a Corio intersection.

The decision effectively means Mr Voss has been granted immunity from prosecution over the 2016 crash that killed Lara 27-year-old Jackson Eales.

THE family of a Geelong crash victim has been left devastated after a judge dismissed charges against a truck driver who caused the fatal collision.

Relatives of Jackson Eales broke down yesterday as a County Court judge granted a permanent stay on criminal proceedings for Gerard Voss.

The decision effectively means Mr Voss has been granted immunity from prosecution over the 2016 crash that killed Mr Eales, a 27-year-old scaffolder from Lara.

Judge Felicity Hampel ruled a properly instructed jury would be unable to exclude the possibility Mr Voss had succumbed to an undiagnosed sleep disorder when he failed to stop at a Corio intersection.

He was due to start a trial this week over the Boxing Day collision that also seriously injured the victim’s girlfriend, Melissa Goldsmith.

The pair had been driving along Heales Rd about 4.30pm when Mr Voss’s fuel tanker careered into them after failing to stop at the Broderick Rd intersection.

Mr Voss, 68, has maintained he blacked out moments before the collision.

After he was taken to hospital, doctors discovered he had suffered a heart attack, however there has been a dispute about whether that happened before or after the incident.

The Leopold man was charged with offences including culpable driving causing death and serious injury, though the prosecution did not argue the crash was the result of inattention or failure to see and obey the stop sign.

Instead, it alleged the collision came after Mr Voss misled his employer and VicRoads by not disclosing his heart condition that had been diagnosed a decade earlier.

The court heard yesterday the truck driver had repeatedly denied suffering heart disease when submitting to workplace medical assessments and when renewing his driver’s licence.

While Judge Hampel said Mr Voss may have suffered a heart attack before the collision, she said there were other possible explanations.

She told the court there was undisputed evidence from a sleep physician that he could have fallen into a microsleep due to undiagnosed and untreated severe obstructive sleep apnoea.

Judge Hampel found there was “simply no rational basis” to conclude that a heart attack before the crash was the only possibility.

“I am satisfied that in this case the prosecution is foredoomed to fail,” she said.

“The evidence simply does not permit a jury properly instructed to exclude the possibility that Mr Voss suffered a microsleep as a result of undiagnosed sleep apnoea or did not suffer a heart attack until after the collision.”

The decision prompted outrage from some members of Mr Eales’s family, who turned and yelled at the truck driver as he was ushered out.