STAFF WRITERS

 

A ROSEDALE man has been handed a five-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to a charge relating to the death of a six-year-old girl in a farm buggy crash at Rosedale three years ago.

Damien Gavin Gibson, 36, was sentenced in the Melbourne County Court on Thursday, October 3, after pleading guilty to culpable driving causing death. He will also be banned from driving for two years.

Gibson took his five children, another girl and a boy on a joy ride during a barbecue with family friends at his Rosedale farm on September 11, 2021.

Gippsland Grammar student Olivia Stevens, aged six, was thrown from the all-terrain vehicle when it hit a rut in the ground and rolled. Olivia was crushed under the vehicle’s roll bars and died while being flown to the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Olivia Stevens was six years and nine months old when she was tragically killed during a playdate on September 11, 2021, on a property in Rosedale. Photo: Contributed

Judge Richard Maidment said Gibson had developed post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, major depression and adjustment disorder, but had “excellent” prospects of rehabilitation, and made note of his early guilty plea had demonstrated remorse.

In February, Gibson chose to revoke his bail, to begin serving a likely prison term. As he has served 238 days in custody, he will be eligible for parole in December 2026. The charge of culpable driving causing death carries a mandatory jail term in Victoria.

Judge Maidment in court noted the devastation Olivia’s death had on the Stevens family, but also on the Gibsons, as the two families were close friends.

“I didn’t know pain like this existed and somehow you just don’t die from it,” Olivia’s mother and Heyfield dentist Yana Stevens read from her victim impact statement in court last month.