A Ballarat policewoman who discovered her father’s body at the scene of a hit-run collision says her world “shattered into pieces” when she realised it was him covered with a sheet on the road.
In a victim impact statement read out by prosecutors in the County Court on Friday, Senior Constable Sophie Thomson said her father had been cycling to improve his fitness to keep up with his grandchildren when he was killed last year.
Policewoman Sophie Thomson and her father David Thomson.Credit:Nine News
“I am unable to forget my dad laying in the middle of the road covered in a white sheet. I was standing on La Trobe Street as my world shattered into pieces,” she wrote.
“As a police officer, how am I meant to go about upholding the right, when I can’t even protect my own father in a town we’ve lived in for 50 years? He was left to bleed and die on the road.”
The court heard on the morning of the collision, 60-year-old David Thomson was riding a bicycle along Brazenor Street in the Ballarat suburb of Delacombe as Bradley Spark approached the intersection along La Trobe Street in an unregistered Mitsubishi Lancer sedan.
As Spark turned north into Brazenor Street, he cut the corner and slid sideways, ending up on the wrong side of the road before striking the front of the pushbike about 5.40am on October 21.
David Thomson was riding his bike in the early hours of the morning when he was struck by the sedan.
Thomson was thrown in the air and landed on the road 21 metres away. He died at the scene.
Police said Spark, whose driver’s licence was suspended at the time, failed to stop at the scene and drove home. Witnesses reported seeing the Lancer flee the area at speeds of up to 100 km/h.
Investigators found the damaged vehicle hidden under tarps among trees at a Ross Creek property. The bonnet, spoiler, windscreen and all identifying numbers had been removed.
During a plea hearing, Thomson’s devastated family members spoke of their heartache at losing a man they said had lived for his friends and family.
David Thomson and his wife, Anne.
Dylan Thomson trembled as he spoke of waking to text messages from his father’s co-workers telling him the 60-year-old hadn’t arrived.
The victim’s son said he’d lost the most important and influential person in his life and now struggled every day to gather the strength to go on.
“To know that my dad laid on Brazenor Street taking his last breath while Brad Sparks sped away without a care is simply unforgivable,” he said.
“If this case can be taken as another example of road safety, then maybe another life can be spared as well as another family’s agony.”
David Thomson with one of his grandchildren.
Thomson’s wife Anne said her husband was well respected in local sporting circles and had dedicated a large part of his life to improving the Ballarat Cricket Association.
She said she had been robbed of a wonderful relationship with a man she did everything with.
In a penned statement, the grieving widow also revealed her own daughter was one of the two police officers who walked through her front yard to deliver the news her husband had been killed.
“I cry myself to sleep most nights because David is not there with me,” she wrote.
“David used to pick me up at 4pm [each day], now Dylan does.”
The court heard that on the morning of the collision, Spark was seen on CCTV driving the unregistered Lancer in the Ballarat area.
He denied being the driver at the time of the collision, and when arrested and taken for questioning at Ballarat police station on October 27, he told police the sedan had been stolen.
The 40-year-old fitter and turner was charged the following day and remanded in custody.
He maintained his innocence until telling an associate he would “own up” in due time. He called his mother on a prison phone on December 16 where he told her “I f—ed up alight”.
He later pleaded guilty to three charges of dangerous driving causing death, failing to stop and failing to render assistance.
Judge Peter Lauritsen will sentence Spark in November.
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