{"id":716375,"date":"2026-06-05T06:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T06:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/716375\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T06:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T06:40:11","slug":"nsw-police-officer-benedict-bryant-sentenced-over-death-of-indigenous-teenager-jai-wright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/716375\/","title":{"rendered":"NSW Police officer Benedict Bryant sentenced over death of Indigenous teenager Jai Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"

A NSW Police officer convicted over a fatal collision that killed an Indigenous teenager has avoided time behind bars.<\/p>\n

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this story contains the image of a person who has died.<\/p>\n

Benedict Bryant was sentenced on Friday to two years’ imprisonment, to be served as an intensive corrective order and 500 hours of unpaid community service work.<\/p>\n

He was also disqualified from driving for three years.<\/p>\n

Bryant was found guilty of dangerous driving occasioning death in November last year.<\/p>\n

Legal experts and First Nations advocates said it was the first time a police officer had been convicted in relation to a death in custody<\/a> of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person.<\/p>\n

Jai Kalani Wright, 16, died in hospital after suffering serious head injuries when the motorbike he was riding collided with an unmarked police car in inner Sydney in February 2022.<\/p>\n

Police said the bike was stolen along with a car, both of which had been spotted by officers nearby before the incident.<\/p>\n

\"Jai<\/p>\n

Jai Wright’s father Lachlan (left) says he’s relieved the case is over. (ABC News: Jamie McKinnell)<\/p>\n

Jai Wright’s father, Lachlan Wright, said the case showed “something went terribly wrong”.<\/p>\n

“Relieved that it’s over is the best way to describe it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“This has been a long, long journey .. it’s a hard day because you go through a lot of memories of Jai so to have family support is very important and that’s what got us through all that.<\/p>\n

“It [the judgement] was about some kind of \u2026 to close things off you know. We’ve lost our son, nothing can ever bring that back.”<\/p>\n

\"From<\/p>\n

Jai Wright was 16 years old when he died in hospital after suffering head injuries in a collision with an unmarked police car. (Supplied.)<\/p>\n

Speaking outside court, Bryant’s lawyer, Paul McGirr, said the decision “didn’t pass the pub test” and that they would appeal.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to add grief to the family a life has been lost but that life could have been spared,” he said.<\/p>\n

“As I said and I’m not trying to rub salt into the wounds, if people were at home \u2026 we wouldn’t be here.”<\/p>\n

Bryant’s ‘honest but mistaken belief’<\/p>\n

At the final sentence hearing, Judge Jane Culver told the packed courtroom of Bryant’s experience as a police officer of over 20 years.<\/p>\n

She said while Bryant had made an ‘honest but mistaken’ belief that Jai would come to a stop at the end of the path, he ought to have known that because of his work experience his actions would pose a serious risk.<\/p>\n

Judge Culver noted Bryant had since “in hindsight” said he should not have proceeded with his actions, and said it was a “horrific tragedy” that has caused “anguish” for Jai’s parents.<\/p>\n

\"Jai<\/p>\n

An image tendered to court showing Bryant’s car and the bike after impact. (Supplied: NSW Supreme Court)<\/p>\n

However, the court heard Bryant’s extent of remorse was distracted by an appeal about his future and perception of an “anti-police narrative”.<\/p>\n

She noted Bryant had no criminal history, had “good prospects” for rehabilitation, and a low risk of reoffending.<\/p>\n

Judge Culver remarked that it was “important to note no sentence can ever measure the value of a human life, especially not a human life tragically lost so young, a life not fully lived, a life that mattered”.<\/p>\n

Bryant’s role within NSW Police is under review and has since been largely administrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A NSW Police officer convicted over a fatal collision that killed an Indigenous teenager has avoided time behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,347621,190486,347620,44,4277],"class_list":["post-716375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-benedict-bryant","tag-indigenous-teen","tag-jai-wright","tag-news","tag-nsw-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716375","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=716375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}