{"id":313455,"date":"2025-11-28T02:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/313455\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T02:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:52:10","slug":"police-officer-benedict-bryan-found-guilty-over-indigenous-teens-trail-bike-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/313455\/","title":{"rendered":"Police officer Benedict Bryan found guilty over Indigenous teen’s trail bike death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning: This story contains the name and images of a deceased Indigenous person.<\/p>\n

A police sergeant who was told not to pursue a teenager riding a trail bike has been told he caused the death of the young man when he placed his unmarked car in his path.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Benedict Bryant<\/a>, 47, was found guilty this morning of dangerous driving occasioning the death of Indigenous teen Jai Kalani Wright in February 2022 in an inner Sydney suburb.<\/p>\n

Judge Jane Culver ruled Bryant should have known placing his car without its lights and sirens activated could have caused a collision which posed a serious risk to the 16-year-old.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/NSW Police Sergeant Benedict Bryant (left) outside court last year. (AAP)<\/p>\n

Bryant was behind the wheel when he parked the car at the end of a bike path he knew the teen was riding down at speed.<\/p>\n

After colliding with the car, Jai was thrown off his bike and suffered critical head injuries, dying at Prince Alfred Hospital the following day.<\/p>\n

While there was no evidence the sergeant was intending to injure or kill the teenager, the judge found a person of his experience should have known creating the obstacle would pose a danger.<\/p>\n

Judge Culver found Bryant also failed to consider how other parked cars in the intersection would have impacted the boy’s ability to see the police car in his path.<\/p>\n

“The presence of these other vehicles posed a visible and physical obstruction to the accused … this required the accused to exercise a greater degree of caution,” she said.<\/p>\n

More than 40 members of the teenager’s family packed the Darlinghurst court room, with dozens of others filling an overflow room.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Jai Wright died following a collision with an unmarked police car (Sydney Morning Herald)<\/p>\n

There were gasps and tears as the judge revealed her verdict while Bryant sat with his head bowed and eyes closed for most of the proceedings.<\/p>\n

Speaking outside court, a supporter of Bryant indicated he would be appealing the verdict and said the incident would never have occurred if everyone was “in bed, like they should be”.<\/p>\n

Jai’s father Lachlan Wright said outside court he hoped the verdict could mark a reset of relations between police and First Nations people.<\/p>\n

“If things can change in the future, in regards to relationships between Aboriginal people in this country and the police force, maybe this won’t happen again,” he said.<\/p>\n

Bryant will return for sentencing on April 17.<\/p>\n

For support contact 13YARN 13 92 76 or Lifeline 13 11 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: This story contains the name and images of a deceased Indigenous person. A police sergeant who was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-313455","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}