A Tarneit man who was jailed for killing a 10-year-old boy in a road rage episode two years ago has had his application for appeal thrown out in the Supreme Court.
Ian Bouch was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years behind bars in February this year, after being found guilty of culpable driving causing death and negligently causing serious injury following the death of Yahye Hashi.
On May 27, 2014, Bouch deliberately stopped his Audi in front of the van that Yahye’s mother, Anisa Rage, was driving. Ms Rage was unable to brake in time, and the family’s car was crushed by a truck from behind.
Bouch applied for leave to appeal against the sentence and conviction. On November 15 this year, after an oral hearing, Judge Simon Whelan refused the application for reasons to be delivered later. He delivered those reasons last week.
“In my view, the sentencing judge’s characterisation of the conduct was clearly correct,” Judge Whelan said. “The applicant deliberately created an emergency for Ms Rage as a form of punishment because he believed she was driving too slowly. This was a shocking example of what is sometimes described as road rage. It fully merited the sentencing judge’s characterisation of it.”
Emotional victim impact statements from Yahye’s family heard in the County Court in February shed light on the pain that came with his death.
Yahye’s brother, Bilal Hashi, who was 13 at the time of the crash, said he had lost part of himself and he and his sister Yasmin had trouble sleeping.
Ms Rage said she and her husband lived in constant dread and every morning was a struggle to show strength for her children. “There is no prison you can put [Bouch] in that is worse than the prison he has put our family in,” she said in her statement.
