Sobbing woman interrupts grieving dad of boy she killed with SUV as he sat with pals

An 11-year-old boy was killed when a driver crashed through the fence of his Melbourne primary school and ploughed into a picnic table where he sat with friends.

Jack Davey died instantly on October 29, 2024, when a Toyota SUV mounted the kerb at Auburn South Primary School, smashing through the boundary and crushing him and three classmates. Another child escaped with minor injuries. In Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Monday, Jack's father Michael described his grief and said he was enraged as he demanded answers.

"An 11-year-old boy, dead in an instant... Jack never saw the car, it's impossible," he said. "How does your car crash through that fence, over that median strip, into those poor children? It's impossible, unbelievable and something I think about every second of the day. The lack of answers to those questions enrages me."

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The driver, 41-year-old Shaymaa Oun Ghazi Zuhaira, interrupted the parents' evidence with loud sobs, shouting: "I'm sorry, really sorry." Prosecutor Anthony Albore withdrew a second charge against Zuhaira - of failing to have proper control of a motor vehicle - after she pleaded guilty to the careless driving charge.

Jack's mother Jayde told the court the single charge against the driver was an "insult". She said: "The charges go nowhere near the outcome. It is an insult to us, and to Jack, if there is no charge for killing him, where is his justice?"

Mr Albore said Zuhaira accelerated at more than 70 per cent as she left a parking spot shortly before 2.35pm, driving through the fence and over the picnic table before the car stopped at steps leading to the sports building. Survivors described being thrown under the vehicle, with one child saying: "Everything went dark, then under a car."

Zuhaira, who held a P2 probationary licence, had been at a meeting with the school principal about her son minutes earlier. She told police the accelerator and wheel were "stuck" and claimed she kept repeating: "I can't control the car."

Her lawyer, Matthew Senia, argued the meeting triggered past trauma from her life in Iraq and impaired her driving. "Her symptoms of trauma were triggered in meeting with the school principal, inhibiting her ability to drive the vehicle and leading to the misapprehension of the accelerator," he said. Albore rejected this, saying witnesses described her as happy and smiling as she left the school.

Mr Albore called for Zuhaira to be convicted and given a community corrections order because of the seriousness of the offending. She will not face jail but could be disqualified from driving, and is due to be sentenced on Wednesday.