As Robyn mourned her son, the driver who hit him went to a wedding

Robyn Murray remembers her son Jamie collecting grasshoppers in their Mandurah backyard to feed to his pet lizard.

He was creative, she says. He would pretend to be the Hulk, collect Back to the Future games, and would win colouring-in competitions.

As he got older, Jamie found his passion in the local performing arts centre. Originally starting as a volunteer, it wasn’t long before he was hired and made friends throughout Mandurah’s art scene.

He became the father of two little boys, and was out at his favourite bar the night he was dropped off at his Dudley Park home in March last year.

The 45-year-old had been drinking and was lying right outside his home on Creery Street, just metres from his front door, when a woman driving her husband to work ran him over.

Analiza Sagang Curtis didn’t see Jamie, she would later tell police, and she thought his body was “rubbish” on the road.

Curtis wasn’t drunk, under the influence of drugs, or driving dangerously. But her actions, and what followed, became subject to proceedings in Western Australia’s District Court.

Curtis dragged Jamie’s body for 90 metres, reversed over him and subsequently dislodged him from the car’s underside.

The court found it was at this moment she became aware she had driven over a man. Footage captured from the scene shows her drive around Jamie, who was fatally injured, and take off down the road.

Robyn Murray remembers getting a series of missed phone calls the next day.

“I rang them back, and they said to me that it was the hospital,” she said.

“They asked did I know Jamie? And I said, yes, I was his mother. They said that he had been involved in a hit-and-run accident, and they were very sorry, but he didn’t make it.

“I just collapsed.”

The next few hours are a blur for Robyn. She remembers her devastation for her son, his broader community, and most importantly, his two boys who would now grow up without a father.

“I was just lost it. I just couldn’t believe what had happened – that he was gone.”

Meanwhile, just streets away from Jamie’s grieving family, Curtis dropped her husband off at work and went to a wedding in the afternoon.

She did not phone the police nor speak to anyone about the events of that morning.

Her husband sent her a screenshot of a newspaper article detailing a man’s death in a suspected hit-and-run in Dudley Park, but still, Curtis did nothing.

When police came knocking after matching the debris on the road with her car, she alleged her husband was driving – a defence the couple had agreed on to save her from the consequences of her actions.

However, detectives eventually got to the bottom of the case and charged her with failing to stop.

During Curtis’ sentencing last month, Jamie’s loved ones sat in the courtroom in “Justice for Jamie” shirts. Curtis’ actions were callous, the judge said, and she undoubtedly knew she had hit a person.

Still, Jamie’s loved ones gasped as Curtis was jailed for 18 months. She would be eligible for parole in nine.

Robyn was left devastated again.

“I thought, 18 months, and she could be out in nine – that’s nothing for someone who’s taken someone’s life,” Robyn said.

“It just devastated me and my family and a lot of the community as well.”

Does WA need stronger hit-and-run laws?

Robyn’s reaction is a common theme among families who have been impacted by hit-and-run sentencings in WA.

The average penalty can range between four months and two years’ jail, with many families expressing their frustration over the low penalties offenders are often subject to.

Curtin University criminal law expert Dr Yvonne Breitwieser-Faria said there was no broad “hit-and-run” offence in WA, and as a result, sentencing laws needed to be able to capture a wide range of offending.

“Within that quite powerful term, there’s quite a lot of offences kind of collapsed into it,” she said.

“So it could include manslaughter, it can include dangerous driving causing death, or careless driving causing death, and it also extends to failure to stop and render assistance.”

Breitwieser-Faria said higher penalties were often reserved for instances where a driver was impaired or driving dangerously before an incident.

However, she said a real argument could be made for courts to focus more strongly on post-impact behaviour in the future.

“In instances where we’re dealing with offences that relate to failures to stop render assistance, failures to report – where behaviour can be considered as callous and evasive, and we’re looking at a victim who has been abandoned – [it may be helpful] to give more weight to the post-impact behaviour,” Breitwieser-Faria said.

Robyn said much of what re-traumatised her at trial was hearing about Curtis’ actions after she realised she had hit Jamie.

She said she would never know how long her son was lying injured on the road, hoping help would arrive.

And to hear Curtis had simply gone about her day as normal after Jamie died, Robyn said, was devastating.

“I just I couldn’t believe some of the things that happened,” she said.

“[Curtis] wanted to speak to me in the court, but I said no, I don’t want to hear anything she has to say.

“She could have maybe saved him.”

Thursday would have been Jamie’s 47th birthday, and Robyn said she and the broader community would continue to honour his memory through his two boys, and his beloved Mandurah Performing Arts Centre.

A memorial has been erected on the street where Jamie died, and his friends and family decorate it with flowers, ribbon, and Fremantle Dockers memorabilia.

Robyn said while she would carry the suffering over her only child’s death for the rest of his life, she would continue to fight for his memory.

“Some people want to get a petition done, other people want to do protests. Yeah, no one can believe it,” she said.

“It’s not long enough.”

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