00:00 66-year-old William Swale from Mount Mastin today faced Melbourne Magistrates Court charged
00:07 with five counts of culpable driving causing death, two counts of negligently causing serious
00:12 injury and seven counts of reckless conduct endangering life after he ploughed into a
00:18 beer garden outside of the Royal Dales for the hotel last month, killing five people.
00:23 Now not long after the crash, lawyers for Mr Swale told the media that their client
00:28 had diabetes and that diagnosis now seems to be a key part of the prosecutor's case.
00:33 So police today told the court that Mr Swale indeed had type 1 diabetes which he'd been
00:38 diagnosed with in 1994, so he'd been managing it for almost three decades and which he wore
00:43 a blood glucose monitor for, which sent notifications to an app.
00:47 Now prosecutors alleged in the 50 minutes leading up to that crash, Mr Swale allegedly
00:52 ignored nine warnings on his diabetes monitor that his blood glucose levels were far too
00:59 low.
01:00 He also allegedly tested his blood glucose levels in that same time span which showed
01:04 his levels were indeed well below the parameters that they were supposed to be at.
01:09 But Mr Swale's lawyers today argued that prosecutors couldn't say definitively whether or not Mr
01:14 Swale had received or acknowledged those warnings.
01:17 Now speed also wasn't a factor in this crash according to investigators, but the court
01:23 also heard that Mr Swale had more than 30 traffic infringements at the time of the crash,
01:28 mainly involving speed.
01:32 Magistrate Brett Sonnet said it appeared that he demonstrated a certain contempt for road
01:36 laws.
01:37 Mr Swale has been reminded in custody and a decision on whether he will be granted bail
01:43 will be made on Friday.
01:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments