A teenage driver who killed Charlie Stevens, the son of South Australia’s police commissioner, in a hit-run crash will hear in court in a couple of months how the Stevens’ family have been affected.
Dhirren Singh Randhawa, 19, pleaded guilty in June to a charge of aggravated driving without due care and leaving the scene of a crash that caused a death, at Goolwa Beach, south of Adelaide, last November.
It followed months of negotiations between prosecutors and the defence, that led to the more serious charge of causing death by dangerous driving, and a charge of failing to truly answer questions, being dropped.
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Randhawa appeared in the SA District Court on Friday, where Director of Public Prosecutions Martin Hinton KC asked Judge Joanne Tracey to set a date for sentencing submissions.
“We anticipate we will need about two hours, there are quite a number of victim impact statements,” he said.
Jane Abbey KC, for Randhawa, said she was anticipating a report from forensic psychologist Loraine Lim.
Charlie Stevens, 18, suffered an irreversible brain injury when he was struck by a car driven by Randhawa during Schoolies Week and died in hospital the following day.
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In June his family were in court to hear Randhawa plead guilty and outside court, Charlie’s father Grant Stevens said that the family had been given a letter of apology from Randhawa.
“I think on behalf of our family, we’d just like to acknowledge that Dhirren has taken responsibility for his actions that saw us lose our son Charlie and we’ve also been handed a letter of apology, so we’ll take time to read that,” he said in June.
The Stevens family was not in court on Friday. Randhawa made no comment as he left court.
Judge Tracey remanded Randhawa on continuing bail to reappear for sentencing submissions on October 3
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