A wail has rung out through a court room as a police officer was sentenced for killing an Indigenous teenager in a NSW-first.
Benedict Bryant was found guilty in November of dangerous driving occasioning death after he parked his unmarked car in front of a stolen trail bike ridden by Jai Wright in 2022. The 16-year-old Bunghutti man was thrown off the bike when he collided with the car, sustaining critical head injuries. He died in hospital the following day.
An overflow court room in Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court was required to accommodate Wright’s family and friends as they gathered to hear Bryant sentenced on Friday. Many were wearing T-shirts bearing the teenager’s face.
An emotional cry rang out from the teeming gallery as the officer was sentenced to a two-year intensive corrections order – a term of imprisonment served outside jail.
“No sentence can ever measure the value of a human life, especially not a life tragically lost so young, a life not fully lived, a life that matters,” Judge Jane Culver said.
It is the first time in NSW a police officer has been held criminally responsible for an Aboriginal death during a police operation, according to the Aboriginal Legal Service.
Jai’s mother Kylie Aloua previously said she didn’t want Bryant to be jailed so his family don’t have to suffer the same loss she feels. The judge described that wish as eloquent “in a way that is utterly humbling” as she relayed a victim impact statement written by Aloua. The statement was accompanied by a chorus of sobs and the emptying of tissue boxes around the court room.
“Every ambulance siren, every police siren, every rushed footstep takes me straight back to that moment”, Aloua wrote. “He will never reach adulthood … I will never be a grandmother to his children. The loneliness is overwhelming. I’m not living, I’m surviving.”
Judge Culver was visibly moved by the words, turning to address Jai’s mother directly. “Your son certainly mattered, and continues to matter,” she said.
Jai’s father Lachlan Wright said the impact of his son’s death was still being keenly felt. “I know this will never end for us all … because all we have is a big family without the glue that kept us together,” he wrote in his own victim impact statement. He sat across the court room from his son’s killer on Friday.
The judge found Bryant, who still serves as a police officer, should have known placing his car in Jai’s path without lights and sirens on could have caused a collision that posed a serious risk to the 16-year-old. Judge Culver also found the tenured officer should have guessed someone disobeying road rules and showing no signs of slowing would not stop at the end of a bike lane.
“The offender ought to have known that where he placed his vehicle was fraught with danger”, she said. She nevertheless found it possible Bryant wrongly believed he was parking the car out of harm’s way, reducing the officer’s moral culpability. But she found Bryant had minimal remorse and was instead “predominantly occupied with appealing his future sentence” and supposed anti-police sentiment.
Bryant sat still, staring straight ahead with his hands in his lap as his sentence was handed down. He was also ordered to complete 500 hours of community service and a three-year suspension of his driving licence.
Bryant’s solicitor Paul McGirr told reporters the serving police officer would appeal against the sentence, which he claims “doesn’t pass the pub test”.
