Prosecutors have lost an appeal against killer driver Christopher Dillon Joannidis’s sentence. -AAP Image
The son of a woman killed in a horrific crash at Strathmerton has declared the justice system “absolutely broken” after prosecutors lost their appeal of the driver’s three-year prison term.
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Christopher Dillon Joannidis ignored a police warning about the dangerous roads in Strathmerton, disregarded signs and crossed three sets of rumble strips before killing five people and a dog.
He had just been given a speeding ticket before he crashed into a ute, which was pushed into the path of a truck towing two trailers along the Murray Valley Hwy in 2023.
Ute driver, Cobram woman, Deborah Markey, 62, her dog Sophie and four farm workers from Taiwan and Hong Kong who were staying at her home – Zhi-Yao Chen, Pin-Yu Wang, Wai Yan Lam and Hsin-Yu Chen – all died instantly.
Joannidis pleaded guilty to five counts of dangerous driving causing death.
He was handed a five-and-a-half-year jail sentence by the County Court in January 2025, with three years to serve before he will be eligible for parole.
Prosecutors appealed the penalty on the grounds it was manifestly inadequate, but three Court of Appeal judges rejected their bid on Wednesday, June 10.
“After anxious consideration, we have concluded that this appeal must be dismissed,” Justices Stephen McLeish, Christopher Boyce and Terence Forrest said in the judgement.
The crash was caused by Joannidis’ protracted inattention at a dangerous intersection and not by more extreme driving, they said.
Christopher Joannidis’s car at the scene of the fatal crash in April 2023.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
The justices noted they found the sentencing judge’s accumulation of eight months jail across four charges to be “lenient”, but ultimately within range.
“We may have imposed slightly longer cumulation on each charge, which would have led to a longer total effective sentence, and a longer minimum term,” the judgement said.
“But this is not to say that the orders for cumulation and the total effective sentence were not reasonably open to His Honour in all the circumstances.”
Outside court, Ms Markey’s devastated son Daniel Montero said the past three years had been a hard road.
“Today justice was just not served for myself and my family,” he told reporters.
“This guy killed five people. It doesn’t matter how you spin it, that’s what he did, and today they couldn’t really give us an answer about why there was no appeal.”
Mr Montero said he would continue fighting for justice, adding that systemic change was needed.
“The system is absolutely broken,” he said.
“If he can just go and kill five people and get nothing, no type of real sentence that makes sense, what’s stopping someone from doing it the next day?”
Truck driver Andrew McClusky's wife Michelle said her husband was effectively serving a life sentence due to the trauma of the crash, while Joannidis may serve just three years.
“It’s disappointing that five people, their lives are only worth eight months each in jail,” she said outside court.
“And they were so innocent, in the wrong place at the wrong time. He seems to get no consequences for what has happened.”
A warning to Joannidis from police before approaching the deadly intersection of the highway from Labuan Rd should have been enough to prevent the crash from occurring, Ms McClusky said.
An officer told him nine people had been killed on the roads in the past 18 months “basically because people don’t see give way and stop signs” in a video played to the County Court in 2024.
“He was warned two kilometres before that intersection… you can't get a better warning,” Ms McClusky said.
“He was given a second chance to save a lot of people’s lives.”
Joannidis, 32, who watched the hearing via video link from prison, will become eligible for release on parole in November 2027.
