Daily Telegraph: Jessica’s life worth less than a year’s jail

A moment of inattention by a motorist caused the death of Jessica Bullen, 18, but for her grief-stricken father yesterday, the punishment hardly fitted the crime. Hit-and-run driver Joseph Dennis Arthur, 49, was jailed for up to nine months for the accident which took Jessica’s life. She was cycling with a friend on Barrenjoey Rd near her Palm Beach home about dawn on November 6 last year when Arthur’s car veered from the road hitting and killing her instantly. Arthur fled the scene, leaving his victim and her friend to await an ambulance.

He drove to his Northern Beaches home and unloaded the small aluminium boat he had been towing before handing himself in to police. After the sentence at the Downing Centre Local Court yesterday, Robert Bullen said: “Children are the most precious thing in the world. I just can’t believe (the sentence). It just doesn’t seem fair.”

Arthur’s lawyer Scott Fraser told the court his client did not know he had hit a person at the time and recalled almost nothing about the accident. Arthur, who also has a teenage daughter, still has nightmares and constantly thinks about what happened, Mr Fraser said.

His nine-month jail sentence on one count of negligent driving and one of failing to stop and render assistance at the scene of an accident was set to begin on October 3, 2006. He will be eligible for parole on April 2 next year.