Guy Daniel Madin, 37, of Moama, pleaded guilty in Shepparton County Court to dangerous driving causing serious injury, and affray.
The court heard Madin had gone to a house in Olympic Ave in Shepparton with Jarrod Mulcahy, Arthur (Abe) Edwards, and another man for a birthday party, and while there two females at the party told Mulcahy that another man had threatened to bash and rape them.
Mulcahy, Edwards, and another person from the party went to another house in the same street at about midnight on February 5, 2022, to find the man who had allegedly made the threats.
Mulcahy hit that man in the head and torso with a lump of timber, before the man and his partner rang others for help, and the two groups got in a wild fight involving weapons, which ended at the initial house.
There, Madin got in his friend’s car, before the assaulted man’s partner tried to wrestle him out of the car and told him he was not allowed to leave.
One of the men threw a chair at the car, shattering the windscreen, while fighting continued, including one man being knocked unconscious, before Mulcahy got in the car with a large gash to his head and told Madin to drive.
Madin drove out fast, pushing the partially closed gates open in front of him and knocking the assaulted man’s partner to the ground before Madin ran over her, dragging her for about five metres.
In a victim impact statement to the court, the woman said she suffered injuries including a broken collarbone, shoulder, ribs and pelvis, as well as tears in her bladder, and spent five weeks in a coma.
She said she relived the trauma of the incident every day.
In delivering her sentence, Judge Diana Manova said the woman’s injuries were very serious.
Madin’s defence counsel had told the court he was fleeing for the safety of himself and his friend and that it was “a situation of self-defence, if not duress”, while the prosecution said anyone around the vehicle could have been injured by Madin’s driving.
Judge Manova said Madin was aware other people were in the vicinity of the vehicle as he drove at the closed gates, and that his driving posed a “significant risk” to those people.
“You ought to have known that if you didn’t exercise care that people would be killed or injured,” she said.
Judge Manova accepted that Madin was “stressed and panicked” but did not accept he was “acting in excessive self-defence”.
“Once you were in the car the danger was over,” Judge Manova said.
She said Madin’s prospects of rehabilitation were “not more than guarded”.
She also spoke of his prior convictions, including ones for failing to stop on police direction, driving recklessly, driving dangerously and dangerous or negligent driving while pursued by police.
Madin was sentenced to 20 months in prison, with a non-parole period of 12 months set.
The 164 days he had spent in pre-sentence detention count as time already served.
His driver’s licence was also cancelled for 20 months.
Judge Manova said his sentence for the affray charge would have been higher, except for the sentences handed to two co-accused, with Mulcahy sentenced to three months in prison for affray and assault and Edwards sentenced to an 18-month community corrections order for affray and other offences.
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