A senior South Australia Police officer has escaped conviction over a hit-and-run crash in Adelaide while his victim is now being targeted by the cops over the incident.
Brevet Sergeant Daryl Wayne Mundy, 56, did not turn up to Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday where his lawyer Daniel Weekley entered guilty pleas on his behalf to charges of failing to stop and give particulars to a person at a crash scene and failing to give particulars about the crash to police.
The court heard Mundy’s ute and another car driven by Allan Kelson were approaching roadworks at low speed on February 7 when the collision occurred, and dashcam footage of the incident shows the pair in a verbal exchange afterwards.
The footage shows Mundy, a former deputy president of the police union, winding his window down and yelling angrily at Mr Kelson and his passenger before driving off.
Mr Kelson then followed Mundy’s car for a short distance to see if he would stop, and took down his licence plate before reporting the incident to a police station.
Mr Weekley told the court his client was unaware there had been a collision, but that after watching the footage he “accepts he should have been aware at the time” and should avoid conviction due to his 35 years of service to the community, ABC News reported.
“He is a man of exceptional character … his life is not marked by a single event, but by years of unwavering service, quiet leadership and personal sacrifice,” Mr Weekley said, adding that his client had been affected by media reporting of the case.
Magistrate Luke Davis described the incident as a “blemish, quite a minor one, and completely out of character” and “at the lower end of the scale” and said he should not be treated differently due to being a police officer.
He fined Mundy $2,000 in his absence and ordered him to pay court costs, but spared him a conviction.
But Mundy’s victim said he was disappointed at the outcome and had been “very, very surprised” when he learned the other driver was a police officer.
“Suddenly the shock was ‘oh, he’s a police officer’, found out that he’s a brevet sergeant, then I found out he’s a detective, and then part of the fraud squad,” Mr Kelson told 7 News outside court.
“He did know he had an accident because for 20 seconds he was road raging at us and blocking the carriageway.”
While Mundy was spared a conviction, Mr Kelson has been hit with an infringement notice for allegedly failing to give way during the crash, which he is contesting.
South Australia Police said in a statement the matter had been referred to the Internal Investigation Section.
Header image: Left, Daryl Mundy (7 News). Right, Mundy caught on dashcam (supplied).
