As a graduate of Victoria University you have tutored Somalian students for some three years without remuneration and this too is an indication not just of your capacity to contribute positively to the community but to your sense of duty.
It is unfortunate indeed that on the night of 3rd of November 2007 that sense of responsibility and that capacity, was not the main motivator in your behaviour. A curriculum vitae which was tendered on your behalf, together with the relevant certificates of your academic accomplishments, simply highlights the incongruity of this breach of the law. You have included in your skills , the capacity to make critical assessments and other skills in a professional context. Though clearly this was not the context in which the offence took place, the assessment of your position on this night and failure to stop was one which carried high moral culpability and it is seen by ordinary, right thinking people, as unacceptable and abhorrent. Despite the fact that Dr Miles' own behaviour took him into fatal danger and created the conditions for such a tragic accident, your flight from the scene must be denounced by the court as criminal conduct.
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Dr Margaret Pickles, a trans-cultural psychiatrist of great experience and outstanding credentials and qualification has written a report about you. She has been a consultant psychiatrist at St Vincent's hospital for 30 years and has had considerable experience of treating patients from different social, religious and cultural backgrounds, particularly migrants from the most troubled areas of the world. She has lectured at the University of Melbourne for 30 years and has delivered many papers internationally and locally and has published broadly. Her expertise is unquestioned.
She has reported that you have been extremely upset about the night in question. The chronic post traumatic stress disorder which you have lived with since your time in Somalia has been, in effect, reactivated, she says, and is now acute and will no doubt require careful treatment and monitoring. Her opinion is that the sight of blood triggered an acute relapse which prompted a 'reactive dissociative behaviour of panic and fear'. She writes that in Somalia the attitude to accidents is to run away or otherwise be severely beaten.
In the context of the period of your permanence in this country and involvement with the taxi industry, it would appear reasonable that you are aware that such responses are not part of the Australian experience. You are an intelligent man, steady in personality and generally responsible in attitude but I accept that there may be a cultural component to your reaction. I take this aspect into consideration as part of your circumstances when arriving at an appropriate sentence.