Richard Pusey to be released from prison after serving jail terms

Richard Pusey is to be released from prison having served his jail terms for filming four dying police officers after a crash on Melbourne’s Eastern Freeway and other offences, including assaulting a woman.

Pusey has been in custody for all but six weeks of the past 16 months since he filmed the officers with his mobile phone in the moments after they were hit by a truck on April 22 last year.

Richard Pusey.

He served a 10-month prison stretch for outraging public decency and other offences stemming from his driving and conduct on the freeway, and has also spent four months on remand for other crimes committed over the past three years.

Pusey, 43, will be released later on Wednesday after magistrate Hayley Bate ruled he had done enough jail for crimes he admitted to in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Monday: assaulting a woman, two road-rage incidents, sending menacing emails to a bank worker and smashing a slab of beer in a Fitzroy bottle shop.

“He is a man who, in a range of settings, deliberately seeks to interfere with the sense of safety of those who encounter him,” Ms Bate said on Wednesday. She imposed a four-month sentence - already served - and ordered a further two months to hang over him for the next two years while he agrees to be of good behaviour.

Pusey, who was also fined $3300 for some offences and ordered to repay two of his victims, watched the sentence on a video link from prison and did not react other than to confirm he could hear and agree to the good behaviour order.

Richard Pusey after being arrested for filming the dying police officers in April last year.Credit:Nine News

Pusey’s lawyer on Monday argued the former mortgage broker shouldn’t serve any more prison after he pleaded guilty to charges including unlawful assault, theft, criminal damage, destruction of property and four counts of using a carriage service to menace.

Those charges relate to him dragging a woman by the arm up some stairs during an argument at his home on December 27 last year, stealing another driver’s car keys in an altercation over a parking space in Melbourne in October 2018, using a key to scratch a motorcycle in March 2019 after trading insults with a rider in Richmond, sending crude and menacing emails to a bank worker in August 2019 amid a dispute over a credit card bill, and dropping a $50 slab of beer last year after being told he wasn’t welcome in the bottle shop.

He was on bail when he assaulted the woman. That night he also briefly put a noose around his neck and climbed onto his apartment roof, and he was taken back into custody when arrested.

Days earlier he sent homophobic, racist and insulting text messages to police who attended his home.

Police on Monday did not push for Pusey to serve more jail time, unless he was not prepared to agree to serve a community correction order.

Senior Constable Kevin King (left), Constable Josh Prestney, Leading Senior Constable Lynette Taylor and Constable Glen Humphris were killed on the Eastern Freeway.Credit:Victoria Police

Pusey gained infamy for filming the four dying officers in Kew after Mohinder Singh’s truck veered into the emergency lane on the freeway and crashed into the police and their stationary cars.

Pusey on Tuesday was banned from working as a mortgage broker for the next decade after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission said it had revoked his licence for making false statements in credit licence applications and compliance statements between 2011 and 2017.

The commission also banned him on character grounds because he lacked honesty, judgement and had “no regard for the law”.

Adam Cooper joined The Age in 2011 after a decade with AAP. Email or tweet Adam with your news tips.

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