Driver’s out of chances
After car crash in Cressy and two motorbike bingles ...
A DRIVER is lucky he is not dead after two crashes west of Geelong while affected by alcohol and disqualified from the roads.
It is estimated Zach O’Connell was doing twice the speed limit and had a blood-alcohol content of up to 0.197 when he crashed into Cressy’s heritagelisted Prowse & Co Grocers store about 11pm on October 25 last year.
Although the impact forced his Ford G6E to flip, and caused part of the building to collapse, Geelong Magistrates’ Court yesterday heard O’Connell and his passenger — his twin Josh — escaped without serious injury.
“You drove so dangerously, and under the influence of alcohol, that you almost killed your twin brother,” Magistrate Ann McGarvie said.
“It would be terrible if he killed himself. The worst thing would be if he had have killed somebody else. That is exactly what could have happened.”
Prosecutor Senior Constable Jacki Davis said the car became airborne after O’Connell failed to negotiate a bend and hit an embankment.
He and his brother were taken to hospital.
The defendant was interviewed by police six weeks after the crash, and asked if he was the driver. “I think I was,” he said. Sen-Constable Davis said: “He said he and his brother were the only occupants in the vehicle, and he wouldn’t have let his brother drive, so it must’ve been him.”
On January 17, O’Connell was thrown 3m into the air after a motorcycle crash in Elliminyt.
Sen-Constable Davis said a witness watched him “mono” through the town, lose control and hit a gutter soon after 5.30pm.
“The impact threw him approximately 3m in the air, and he came to rest in bushes,” she said.
To the surprise of the concerned witness — who had called police — the man rode off.
But less than 90 minutes later, officers had reports of another crash, this time in Hearn St, Colac. O’Connell was again the rider.
After being taken to hospital, he left without having a formal blood reading taken.
Ms McGarvie noted she had given O’Connell a fiveyear licence ban for other dangerous acts on the roads earlier this year, and noted he had completed only one hour of community work.
She said the man had a long list of prior high-range drink driving offences, and had been caught at least 10 times driving while disqualified.
Noting his battles with an acquired brain injury and improved behaviour, defence lawyer Robert Morgan argued he should be kept out of jail.
But Sen-Constable Davis argued it was time he was locked up, saying that would be the “community’s ty’s expectation”.
Ms McGarvie agreed, d, particularly as he had d squandered his community corrections order, and jailed him for two months.
But O’Connell launched an appeal l against that sentence and d was granted appeal bail.
His appeal will be heard ard in the County Court, where ere it is possible he could get a longer stint behind bars.