A man who attempted to drive across a flooded creek, resulting in the drowning deaths of two friends, has been found not guilty of manslaughter. The incident occurred on the night of October 31, 2022, when victims Ghosn Ghosn, 30, and Bob Chahine, 32, were standing in the back of Jawad Al Hussein's pickup truck.
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02-13, 2025Al Hussein, 43, underwent a trial lasting over a week in the Goulburn District Court. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty on charges of manslaughter and dangerous driving occasioning death yesterday afternoon. However, he still faces lesser charges of negligent driving occasioning death, which were not put before the jury during the trial, and he is due to reappear in court next Monday.
During the trial, the jury learned that neither of the two drowning victims could swim. They fell or jumped from the vehicle as it was swept away by the raging floodwaters. Their bodies were discovered days later, having been washed two kilometers away from the causeway. Al Hussein and another man who was in the cab of the pickup truck managed to escape and swim to safety, watching helplessly as their terrified friends disappeared into the darkness.
Defense lawyer James Lang argued that Al Hussein's actions were a misjudgment and did not meet the threshold for manslaughter. He stated, "Everyone makes misjudgments in their life. This misjudgment led to the tragic deaths of two men in a very short period of time." The jury also heard a frantic emergency call made by Al Hussein after walking for nearly an hour to find a phone signal, in which he pleaded for help and told the operator he had lost sight of his friends. "Please help me, please help me. Two people are going to die," he said in the call. "They're gone. They're gone. We lost them. I wish we could see them."
At the time of the incident, the group was attempting to reach an amateur farm owned by Al Hussein, located just minutes away. He had told the drowning victims that their own vehicles could not pass through the flooded causeway and that they should ride in the back of his Mitsubishi Triton pickup truck. Prosecutors alleged that the vehicle stalled almost immediately after entering "fast-flowing and relatively deep water" and was quickly swept off the causeway. Prosecutor Glen Porter stated, "He drove into floodwaters knowing or thinking there was a significant risk his vehicle would stall and that both passengers could not swim." Chahine's wife, Ramonda, provided tearful evidence during the trial, recalling a phone call with her husband shortly before the men entered the water. She told the court, "He said, 'I have to go, it's raining'. The next morning I sent him a message saying 'Good morning' and it didn't send."
