Crash killer’s sentence a cold comfort

Durban - ‘Out of the 7 077 languages, not one could describe the pain of losing my dad,” a Durban teenager has revealed, saying it upset her that the young man responsible for his death had shown no remorse.

“Words are inadequate to describe how drastically my life has changed. He was my best friend,” Micayla Symington wrote in her victim impact statement about the death of her father, businessman Liam Symington, 40, in a collision more than two years ago.

A 21-year-old Durban North student, whose sentence was intended to help him “build character”, was on Monday given a three-year suspended jail term by the Verulam Regional Court for culpable homicide.

He had admitted his negligence caused the accident, but magistrate Betty Rawheath said in sentencing that she thought he needed to be less self-absorbed and look at it from the victim’s point of view.

The sentence includes two years of correction supervision – the student has to obtain a certificate of competency in paramedical services and work at an ambulance service for two hours a week for one year.

For driving without a licence he was given a two-year suspended sentence.

Rawheath also ordered that R100 000 be paid as compensation to Morris for the counselling her daughters are currently receiving.

The student obtained his licence six months after the January 23, 2011 accident, but Rawheath suspended it for 18 months, ordering him to immediately surrender it.

The student was insensitive, immature, self-centred and “used to having his way”, Rawheath said in passing sentence, adding that his parents should also take the blame.

She found it hard to believe that he did not have their permission to drive their BMW M3.

“A responsible parent would never have allowed it,” she put to the defence, saying the parents – they were seated in the packed gallery – needed to take responsibility for the events of that evening.

“They ought to have taken more care.”

The student cannot be named due to an earlier ruling which prevented the Daily News from publishing his name, as he was 17 at the time of the crash.

He pleaded guilty to culpable homicide and driving without a licence, saying he had used his parents’ BMW to collect takeaway food and had lost control of the vehicle.

The M3 slammed into a VW Golf driven by Symington in uMhlanga Rocks Drive on a rainy evening.

Symington’s daughters Micayla and Riley, then 13 and 6, were seriously injured.

In his plea explanation to the court on Friday, the student admitted he was negligent and claimed he was remorseful.

But Micayla, testifying in aggravation of sentence, had said she was not convinced he was remorseful.

She referred to the student’s Twitter profile picture and his tweets about speeding and partying.

One particular tweet, “Heaven is an open road in an M car”, brought her to tears.

“I am sitting here without a father and he is tweeting about a car similar to one that killed my father,” she told the court.

“If he was remorseful he wouldn’t be on social media talking about cars.”

Micayla received counselling every day for a year after the accident. She is currently seeing her psychologist once every three to four weeks. Each session cost her mom, Kelly Morris, R600, she said.

State advocate Cheryl Naidu also questioned the sincerity of the student’s submission, referring to pictures posted by him on Twitter of him posing next to a yellow BMW and a Toyota 86, both high-performance vehicles.

Naidu argued that the tweets discovered by Micayla were insensitive and showed recklessness to the greatest extent.

She argued that on the day of the collision, his mother told emergency personnel on the scene that she had accompanied her son in the vehicle.

“The mom pretended to be injured as a charade to ensure that her son did not incur further blame. This was not disputed,” Naidu said.

“The accused hasn’t really learnt the lesson that a car is an object that gets you from point A to B. He sees a car as a thrill to do whatever he likes.”

However, defence attorney Ryan Naidu told the court that his client had also suffered and had been “scarred” by the accident.

He said his client failed several courses and had to change universities after he was shunned by his peers.

Rawheath put it to Naidu that his client had not been able to think for himself and work through his challenges.

If the student was so traumatised, he would not have been in such a hurry to drive around, she said referring to the licence he obtained soon after the accident.

“The accused needs to build some character,” the magistrate said, adding that if he looked at the situation from the side of the people who were hurt by it, he would have already begun his rehabilitation process.

“Take a step back and regroup. At this point you are not going anywhere toward developing your character,” she said.

“I don’t know how badly affected you were but you seem to be more involved with yourself. You cannot build character if you continually think about yourself. Your sentence will give you opportunity to build character.”

Speaking to the Daily News outside court, Symington’s ex-wife, Kelly Morris, said she was very happy with the sentence, but would have felt better had the student shown remorse.

“If only there was an apology, it would have helped a lot.”

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