Boy racers — was justice served?
4.44am.
I should be asleep.
But my mind won’t rest and I’m thinking about her.
I’m thinking about the woman standing outside Hamilton courthouse following the manslaughter trial of the two men involved in that fatal street race crash on Ohaupo Road. Amber de Silva is her name. And she’s angry. Pissed. Furious. Tears are welling. But she holds it together.
She wants someone to hear her. Anyone. Someone who can change the sentence. Someone who can deliver justice.
She is angry four people are dead and she wants someone to stand up and say: I did It. It was my fault.
But she doesn’t hear those words.
Her nephew Paul de Silva was among those killed in the crash.
The driver of the crashed car, Lance Robinson, was two-anda-half times over the legal alcohol limit when he crashed and was killed. Methamphetamine and THC were also detected in his system.
His speeding Nissan was ripped clean in half. The impact was unsurvivable for the other three occupants of the car as it fishtailed out of control and hit a van.
Amber’s nephew died at the scene.
Hearing the crash details in court must have been harrowing. Disturbing. Life-changing. Gutting.
Seeing the pictures must have been worse.
Two boys racing Robinson were charged with manslaughter. The driver Dylan Cossey is guilty.
De Silva is angry at the lack of remorse shown by Cossey. ‘‘It’s a joke,’’ she said. ‘‘He’s treated the court case like an inconvenience.’’
He’s guilty of four counts of manslaughter and been sentenced to home detention and community service. It’s why she’s angry on the steps of the courthouse as the TV cameras roll.
She wants the judge to act as a judge instead of a sympathetic social worker. She wants justice for her dead nephew. She wants to see genuine remorse and six years jail time.
The picture she paints is of a justice system with no soul. No caring. No heart. No justice for the dead. It’s a familiar tale repeated over and over again outside our courtrooms.
Newstalk ZB reported Cossey smirked as the verdict was handed down.
Amber says the same thing. Cossey smirked throughout the trial, she said. There is no remorse and the home-detention sentence doesn’t send the right message to the boy-racer community.
You can kill four people and be found guilty and you get to stay at home with Netflix and have hot showers and relationships.
It’s clear as she speaks with measured anger and frustration that imprisonment would have sent a stronger message to the boy racers.
It would keep other families off the steps of the courthouse in tears calling for justice for their family following another inevitable boyracer crash.
I think she thinks they got away with it. Four people are dead and the two boys charged with manslaughter have got away with it. There’s no jail time.
The other boy charged with manslaughter, Stephen Jones, edited film of the crash.
He is found guilty of perverting the course of justice, not guilty of manslaughter.
Amber says they should have stopped to see if people were hurt. Instead, they sped away from the scene. ‘‘Gap it, bro,’’ passenger Jones said.
In sentencing Cossey to home detention and community service, Justice Anne Hinton said Cossey had demonstrated little in the way of remorse for the victims and their families, but she took into consideration Cossey’s recent short stay at the Henry Bennett Centre.
The two boys Dylan Cossey and Stephen Jones are now the poster kids for what happens when boy racers kill. For the rest of their lives, they have a burden to carry.
But who will speak for Amber? She is just one of many. It is such a common sight. Those affected in some way by criminal offences on the steps of a New Zealand courthouse seeking justice. Many of them in tears.
Our failing justice system is one of the biggest problems the country faces. The Prime Minister can talk all she wants about poverty. But there is a different kind of poverty in our country. It is the moral poverty of our justice system – it is a lack of respect for the injured, for the dead, for the maimed.
Judges have become soft, desensitised. They see it every day and now they no longer have a real world view. I wonder how they’d react if it was their family, their wha¯ nau, their mokopuna killed in a street race.
I wonder if judges know justice is beyond the constraints of the law.
It was an avoidable accident, the cops say. It makes no difference. People are hurt. Families are ripped apart. And there’s an angry woman on the steps of the courthouse.
She won’t be the last to call for justice. She won’t be the last to call for harsher sentences. Someone should say something. 6.15am …