ARREST WILL NOT BRING SAM BACK
SAM Brown was the kind of guy who went out of his way to help people.
But tragically no one was there in the 20-year-old’s hour of need after he was struck by a car in Mermaid Beach.
The popular Burleigh Bombers Aussie Rules player died from head injuries after the suspected hit-and-run on November 25, 2012.
Police investigated but no one was charged.
Then police recently received a tip-off through Crime Stoppers about a man who they had interviewed in their original investigation.
More than two and a half years after the incident Julian Hartley, a 41-year-old former taxi driver, was charged with failing to stop at a road incident in relation to the crash.
The NSW man will next appear in the Southport Magistrates Court on November 6.
Sam’s mother Leanne Brown said the charges gave her a sense of relief but she still felt she didn’t know what happened to her son.
“It’s really hard because Sam was such a giving person himself – he’d always be the one to stop and help,” she said.
“At the end of the day, we still don’t really know what happened.”
Mrs Brown said her family had spent two and a half years “totally in the dark” about what had happened and were told police had ruled out a hit-and-run.
“He was such a happy person that I would have hated it to have been an assault,” she said.
“He wasn’t a fighter, he wasn’t that type of person.”
The grieving mother said the whole experience had been a “nightmare” but thanked the person who brought forward new information to police.
She said “everything was going right” for Sam the night he was killed, after being given a train- eeship with AFL Queensland and getting off crutches following a knee operation.
“He was on top of the world, everything was going perfect for him,” she said.
“I think he was on a bit of a high celebrating, as he’d been housebound for quite a while on crutches.
“He was the sort of guy that never had a bad word to say about anyone – he just loved people and everyone loved him.”
Mrs Brown said she felt unsure about whether she would follow the case in court, fearing the driver would walk away with a fine.
“No matter what happens, our lives are torn apart and nothing’s going to change that now,” she said.