Director of Public Prosecutions v Welch
[2025] VCC 161
•20 February 2025
| IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA | Revised Not Restricted Suitable for Publication |
AT MELBOURNE
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Case No. 23-01733
| THE DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS |
| v |
| PAIGE WELCH |
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JUDGE: | His Honour Judge Chettle | |
WHERE HELD: | Shepparton and Melbourne | |
DATE OF HEARING: | 11 November 2024, 12 November 2024, 12 February 2025 | |
DATE OF SENTENCE: | 20 February 2025 | |
CASE MAY BE CITED AS: | DPP v Welch | |
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION: | [2025] VCC 161 | |
REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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Subject:CRIMINAL LAW
Catchwords: Sentence – recklessly causing serious injury, failing to stop after a motor vehicle accident, failing to render assistance after a motor vehicle accident - plea of guilty – after commencement of trial.
Legislation Cited: 6AAA Sentencing Act 1991
Cases Cited:R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102; R v Boulton [2014] VSCA 342, Bugmy V R (2013) 302 ALR 192.
Sentence:Imprisonment-aggregate term of 12 months imprisonment, Community Correction Order- 3 years, standard core conditions and special conditions; perform 200 hours of unpaid community work, undergo treatment and rehabilitation for drug abuse, mental health and supervision, cancellation and disqualification of drivers licence for 4 years, forfeiture and disposal orders.
s6AAA declaration: but for the plea of guilty a sentence of 6 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 3 years would have been imposed
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APPEARANCES: | Counsel | Solicitors |
| For the Crown | Mr P. Teo | Ms I. Abdulnour, Office of Public Prosecutions |
| For the Accused | Ms M. Greener | Ms E. Grey, Leanne Warren & Associates |
HIS HONOUR:
1 Paige Welch, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of recklessly causing serious injury, one charge of failing to stop after a motor vehicle accident and one charge of failing to render assistance after a motor vehicle accident.
2 You pleaded guilty to recklessly causing serious injury after a trial before a jury commenced in Shepparton County Court in November of 2024.
3 The facts of your offending are set out in Exhibit A, the summary of prosecution opening. I was informed by your counsel that I could treat that document as an agreed statement of fact. I incorporate it into these reasons for sentence and sentence you on the basis of the facts set out therein.
4 Very briefly stated, on Sunday, 1 January 2023, you were present with a number of other people at the home of your victim, Shane Cook, in Cobram. Ms Cook was not at home until she arrived back at about 12.48 am. She went inside and started arguing with another woman in the house. She told that woman and you to leave her home.
5 You both went out the front of the premises and after some discussion got into a Nissan Pulsar parked on the nature strip. CCTV footage shows you walk out of the premises, remonstrate with Ms Cook, then get into the driver's seat.
6
Ms Cook walked out to the driver's side of your vehicle and continued arguing with you through the window of your car. You verbally threatened to run
Ms Cook over. You started the Nissan and reversed it a short distance. Ms Cook had moved towards the front of your vehicle and you drove forward quickly and struck her and she ended up on the bonnet of your car. You braked and stopped the vehicle, causing Ms Cook to fall to the ground in front of your then stationary vehicle. You then drove forward over Ms Cook and onto the road, driving away without stopping and without rendering assistance.
7 Witnesses assisted Ms Cook and police and ambulance were called. She was airlifted to The Alfred Hospital with life threatening serious injuries. Her pelvis was shattered. Her ribs were broken. Her lungs were damaged and her collarbone fractured. She was in an induced coma for six days. She required substantial rehabilitation.
8 From her appearance at your abandoned trial, Ms Cook appears to have substantially recovered from her injuries.
9 In a victim impact statement, Exhibit B, she outlines the substantial effect your crime has had upon her and her two children. Apart from the physical injuries she sustained, anxiety, PTSD, depression and stress have all been caused. I take the contents of that victim impact statement into account in sentencing you.
10
You turned yourself in to the police at Cobram at about 5 am on 1 January. You were not fully forthcoming to the police. You denied running over Ms Cook. You claimed that Ms Cook moved in front of you vehicle and that you believed she was going to hurt you. You claimed to be concerned that she would smash the window of your car and that she may have had a knife and I refer to
Exhibit D, the record of interview. Your version of events is at odds with that available in the CCTV footage, Exhibit C.
11 At the time of your offending you were 21 years of age and had had no prior criminal history. Your personal history is set out in your counsel's submissions, Exhibit 1 and the report of psychologist, Hannah Dawson.
12 You were born in Wangaratta in August 2001. Both your parents used illicit drugs and your father was regularly violent to your mother. You witnessed both parents abusing drugs. When you were only 14 your mother died from a heroin overdose. You continued to have issues with your father and obtained an intervention order against him. You were effectively homeless at the age of 14.
13 Your mother's death saw you leave school. You found sporadic employment and were working in a hotel at the time you offended.
14 You currently receive Centrelink benefits and live with a friend in Cobram. Your father died of leukaemia in May of 2022. Despite your history of violence and threats from him, you visited him daily up until his death.
15 You have a history of mental health issues. You have been admitted to hospital on a number of occasions between January 2021 and January 2023, apparently with suicidal ideation. Immediately after your offending you threatened to harm yourself and were admitted to hospital.
16 Ms Dawson concluded that you have potential Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, cannabis use disorder and suggestions of borderline personality disorder. You also present with complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and persistent depressive disorder.
17 Ms Dawson opines that your issues have undermined your ability to think clearly, respond calmly and exercise appropriate judgment, thus contributing to your offending.
18 Your counsel relied upon Ms Dawson's comment that imprisonment would weigh more heavily upon you than on a person without your mental health issues and vulnerabilities and that prison would exacerbate your depression and CPSD symptoms.
19 These statements led your counsel to submit that limbs 1, 2, 5 and 6 of the principles in Verdins have application to you.
20 The learned prosecutor submitted that the basis of your account of your offending is not supported by the CCTV footage. That shows, he submitted, that you were not rushing away in fear, nor was there any suggestion Ms Cook was armed or dangerous to you.
21
The footage, in my view, does not support your version of events to police,
Ms Dawson, or that that was set out in the prosecution opening which you agreed is an agreed statement of fact. It does not accord with the version of events you provided to Corrections when you were assessed for a community corrections order.
22
You were controlled, assertive and angry when you left the house and got into your car. Your movements when driving were deliberate and measured. Your plea of guilty acknowledges that you knew that you were driving at and over
Ms Cook would probably result in her sustaining serious injury but you went ahead and drove at her, nonetheless.
23 I do not accept that limbs 1 and 2 of Verdins[1] are enlivened in your case. However, I do accept and take into account that your mental health issues will make your time in custody more onerous for you and imprisonment may exacerbate those issues.
[1]R v Verdins [2007] VSCA 102
24 I take into account in a general way your troubled and challenged childhood in accordance with the High Court judgment in Bugmy[2]. Your life has been extremely difficult and it is to your credit that you have not been in any trouble prior to this incident.
[2]Bugmy V R (2013) 302 ALR 192,
25 I take into account your pleas of guilty. Although those pleas were entered at a late stage, they nonetheless evidence acceptance by you of your responsibility for Ms Cook's serious injuries and perhaps they indicate some form of remorse. You are entitled to a reduction to sentence I would otherwise impose to reflect those pleas of guilty and I will return to the effect of that reduction subsequently.
26 You have had some involvement in the past with illicit drugs but there is no suggestion that drugs or alcohol played any role in this offending.
27 You are currently living with a friend in Cobram but are not employed.
28 Given your lack of criminal history and the support evidenced in the references tendered, Exhibit 3 on your plea, I assess your prospects of rehabilitation to be reasonable.
29 Your counsel submitted that the court should impose a community corrections order in respect of your offences and relied upon the much-quoted passages in R v Bolton[3]. The prosecutor submitted that the seriousness of your offending was such that a term of imprisonment with a parole period was required to address sentencing principles and general deterrence, just punishment and denunciation of your conduct.
[3]R v Boulton [2014] VSCA 342,
30 I had you assessed for suitability to undergo a community corrections order and you were found suitable for such an order. You maintained to Corrections that you offended because of your 'poor consequential reasoning and lack of emotional regulation'. You claim to have been in flight mode because of your childhood trauma. You also claim to have blacked out in relation to running over Ms Cook.
31 As I have previously stated, the CCTV footage does not support these assertions nor do they sit with your pleas of guilty. Nonetheless, you were found suitable to undergo a community corrections order.
32 The Court of Appeal has made it clear in Bolton that imprisonment must be the sentence of last resort and that imprisonment can be detrimental to young and vulnerable people. The much-quoted paragraph, paragraph 131 makes it clear that a properly structured community corrections order can be the appropriate sentence even in relatively serious offences which otherwise would attract a medium term of imprisonment.
33 The court also recognise in paragraph 140 that in some cases principles of just punishment, denunciation and/or deterrence cannot be served by a community corrections order, even on with onerous conditions.
34 Finally, at paragraph 141 the court concluded that;
'the availability of a combination sentence means that in cases of objectively grave criminal conduct the purposes of the sentence can be served by a short term of imprisonment coupled with a community corrections order of lengthy duration with tailored conditions.'
35 Your offending was serious criminal conduct. You used a motor vehicle as a weapon and caused significant serious injury to Ms Cook. You chose to drive as you did and realised the probable consequences of your actions. You then drove away, leaving Ms Cook near death in the street.
36 In my view this is an offence that calls for the expression of general deterrence, just punishment and denunciation of your conduct. It is too serious to allow the court to release you on a community corrections order.
37 I have given anxious thought to whether or not your offending is so serious that a combination sentence of imprisonment and a community corrections order is outside the range of sentences available.
38 Because of the mitigatory factors to which I have referred but particularly your age, lack of prior conviction and your troubled personal history, coupled with your pleas of guilty, I have concluded that a combination sentence can meet all sentencing requirements. You can be punished and rehabilitated and the community thereby protected by a combination sentence.
39 On all three charges you are convicted, that is, on the charge of recklessly cause serious injury, failing to stop after a motor vehicle accident, and failing to render assistance.
40 On all three charges you are sentenced to an aggregate term of imprisonment of 12 months, and in addition, at the conclusion of that term of imprisonment you will undergo a community corrections order for a period of three years.
41 Apart from the standard core conditions there will be special conditions that you perform 200 hours of unpaid community work, you undergo treatment and rehabilitation for drugs, treatment and rehabilitation for mental health and you will be under supervision.
42 On Charges 2 and 3, the failing to stop and failing to render assistance, I order that any licence to drive a motor vehicle you hold is cancelled and you are disqualified from applying for such a licence for four years from today.
43 I make the forfeiture and disposal orders sought by the Crown.
44
You are to report to the Shepparton Community Corrections Centre within
48 hours of your release from custody.
45 You will have to live in Victoria. You cannot go interstate without the permission of the Corrections Officer. If you breach the community corrections order by non-compliance or further offending you will be brought back before me and you will be re-sentenced in relation to these charges. Do you understand that?
46 ACCUSED: Yes.
47 HIS HONOUR: Do you consent to undergo the community corrections order I have outlined?
48 ACCUSED: Yes.
49 HIS HONOUR: Thank you. Pursuant to s6AAA of the Sentencing Act[4], I indicate that but for your pleas of guilty I would have imposed an effective term of imprisonment of 6 years with a non-parole period of 3 years and 6 months, had you been convicted by a jury of the charges to which you pleaded guilty. No other orders required?
[4]6AAA Sentencing Act 1991
50 MR TEO: Your Honour, just in relation to the licence disqualification, my learned friend's instructor obtained a notice of licence suspension in relation to this matter, so it can be backdated to 1 January 2023.
51 HIS HONOUR: So, there was a notice given to her on this?
52 MR TEO: Yes, on the day.
53 HIS HONOUR: All right. So, I amend my order of the 4 years to commence not from today's date but for 4 years from 23 January 2023.
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