Harrowing footage has been aired in court of the moment an Indigenous teenager riding a trail bike crashed into a police vehicle, as a battle erupts over the relevance of an earlier collision.
Sergeant Benedict Bryant, 47, was behind the wheel when Jai Kalani Wright rode the motorbike into his unmarked police vehicle in inner-city Sydney on February 19, 2022.
The 16-year-old was thrown off his bike and suffered critical head injuries, dying at Prince Alfred Hospital the following day.
The sergeant has pleaded not guilty to a charge of dangerous driving occasioning death and faced Darlinghurst District Court on Monday for the first day of his judge-alone trial.
Bryant had been alerted to a teen riding an allegedly stolen trail bike through the streets of Eveleigh and was instructed not to pursue him, crown prosecutor Philip Strickland SC told the court.
The teen had been seen swerving in front of a police car, accelerating loudly as he veered into a bike lane.
The court was told the trail bike was estimated to have been travelling about 68km/h in a 40km/h zone before it hit an obstruction, which sent Jai airborne.
Bryant had crossed the intersection to turn right and stopped near the end of the bike lane without his lights or sirens activated when the teen hit his car, Mr Strickland said.
Confronting surveillance footage shows Jai hitting the windscreen and cartwheeling through the air before landing on the ground 15 metres away.
Jai's family and friends - many wearing T-shirts with his image - packed the courtroom, spilling out of the public gallery and into seats normally reserved for jury members.
Some of them left the courtroom when the footage of the collision was played.
Others were seen wiping away tears.
Mr Strickland said Bryant created a real risk of collision when he turned across the path of Jai's bike while his view of the teen was obstructed.
The sergeant effectively created a roadblock without authorisation or reasonable grounds and ought to have known that a resulting "collision would potentially be catastrophic", the prosecutor said.
"As an experienced police officer with some 20 years of experience, the accused ought to have been aware of the potential danger," Mr Strickland asserted.
But the police sergeant's barrister said the roadblock had been created by another officer, also in an unmarked car, forcing Jai to manoeuvre around him and into a vehicle he didn't see.
"It created a situation where my client was unaware anyone could even come through (from the bike lane)," Brent Haverfield told the court.
Bryant was very familiar with the area and thought Jai would have to divert his path because of the way the bike lane ended, his lawyer said.
Mr Strickland is fighting to include evidence of a separate collision involving an e-bike rider and a police car driven by Bryant months earlier.
The rider said the police car pulled into a driveway in front of him, leaving him no room to stop before a crash.
"It seemed like they tried to run me over," he told the court.
But Mr Haverfield questioned whether the man had been given ample time to stop or remembered the events clearly.
He argued the evidence of the earlier collision should be excluded from the trial because it described a different type of police operation in terms of the speed and vehicles involved.
Judge Jane Culver will determine whether evidence about the incident will be admissible at a later stage.
Bryant remains employed by the NSW Police Force.
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