Members of the family of Melissa Hoskins delivered sufferer impression statements in an emotional courtroom listening to, calling her demise a “tragic accident” within the District Court docket in Adelaide on Monday.
Hoskins’ mom, father and sister confronted accused Rohan Dennis, who entered a responsible plea to an aggravated cost of making a probability of hurt within the case surrounding Hoskins’ demise in late December 2023.
“She did not deserve this for all the great she did. She at all times put her household first. Her demise is so unfair and tragic,” ABC reported Amanda Hoskins, Melissa Hoskins’ mom, talking on to Dennis as he sat within the dock within the courtroom.
“Melissa was the very best factor that ever occurred to you. Rohan, you liked Melissa, and I do know that you’d by no means deliberately damage her. Your mood is your downfall and must be addressed.”
Melissa Hoskins’ father, Peter Hoskins, mentioned the household is devastated, the Guardian reported. He recalled a last video name along with his daughter: “She might hardly include her pleasure on the prospect of internet hosting her first New 12 months’s Eve get together.
“The subsequent time I noticed Melissa was within the mortuary viewing room on the Royal Adelaide Hospital … that, I’ll always remember. It would hang-out me endlessly.”
Dennis was formally charged March of 2024 for his involvement within the demise of Hoskins, his spouse and former Olympian and World Champion, after a automobile incident that occurred close to their household residence in Adelaide.
He was allegedly driving the automobile which struck Hoskins on December 30, 2023. She was taken to the hospital and died the subsequent day.
The unique prices additionally included inflicting demise by harmful driving and an aggravated offence of driving with out due care. Each these prices had been later dropped. In December 2024, Dennis pleaded responsible to a lesser cost of committing an aggravated act prone to trigger hurt.
Prosecutor Tali Costi advised the courtroom on Monday that whereas Dennis was not criminally answerable for Hoskins’ demise, he both didn’t know or was “reckless to the very fact she was holding onto the automobile” as CCTV footage emerged displaying the seconds main as much as the incident.
Presiding Decide Ian Press will sentence Dennis on Might 14, 2025; nonetheless, his lawyer, Jane Abbey KC, has requested that Decide Press impose a suspended sentence.
Abbey advised the courtroom the pair had been engaged in a “home dispute” over kitchen cupboards earlier on December 30, however that “Definitely, in Mr Dennis’ thoughts, he didn’t know that she was nonetheless close to the automobile.”
The utmost penalty for an aggravated cost of making a probability of hurt is seven years imprisonment plus a five-year lack of driver’s licence.
