By Brendan Rees
An Uber driver, who savagely bashed a passenger senseless after being threatened with a “s—t rating” for the ride, has been jailed.
Egmen Ayyildiz, 41, who runs a Narre Warren kebab business, was sentenced to the Victorian County Court on Thursday 5 March to 18 months in jail after pleading guilty to a charge of intentionally causing injury.
In her sentencing remarks, Judge Wendy Wilmoth said during the early hours of 9 July, 2017, Ayyildiz, an Uber driver at the time, had picked up a male victim from a hotel.
As the 25-year-old victim sat in the car he asked the driver to go to a McDonald’s restuarant but Ayyildiz instructed him: “No food in my car!”
The victim told Ayyildiz he would keep the food in its bag until he got home but again he refused.
The court heard the victim got out of the car and threatened Ayyildiz he would give him a ‘s–t rating’ and “uttered racial slurs,” Judge Wilmoth said.
Enraged, Ayyildiz got out and grabbed the victim on the shoulder before kicking and punching him to the ground.
As the victim tried to get up, Ayyildiz stomped on his head with his boot hitting him in the right eye, the court heard.
Security guards from the hotel intervened and Ayyildiz got back into his car and left.
The incident was captured on CCTV – with Judge Wilmoth saying the “viciousness of the attacker” was “quite apparent”.
The victim was admitted to hospital with bruising, swelling, lacerations to his right cheek and eye, mild concussion and a ripped bottom eye lid.
The following day a plastic surgeon performed a skin graft on his ripped eye lid, taking skin from his ear, the court heard.
He suffers from anxiety and depression as a result of the incident and needs counselling, Judge Wilmoth said.
“This has affected his sleep and he has unreasonable fears about ordinary things as well as feelings of panic if he is obliged to use a taxi or Uber,” Judge Wilmoth said.
“He feels embarrassed and ashamed of the scars and has withdrawn socially”.
The court heard Ayyildiz, who had migrated from Turkey to Australia in 2008, was “sincerely sorry” and had “never behaved in this way before and had not intended to”.
However in sentencing Judge Wilmoth said: “I have concluded that the seriousness of the offending, the severe impact on the victim and the need for general deterrence require a prison term of greater length than what would be possible combined with a community corrections order”.
The court heard Ayyildiz was previously married and had pulled out “a chunk” of his then wife’s hair in the presence of her four-year-old daughter, whom she had from a previous relationship.
She took out out an intervention order against him, which he breached and was placed on a community corrections order.
Ayyildiz studied commercial cooking at TAFE when he arrived in Australia and had worked at Crown and a cafe as a chef.
Two years later, he bought a restaurant but after suffering a back injury, he was forced to sell up.
Due to his “dire financial circumstance” he began Uber driving and security guard work for several years before starting his own kebab caravan business in Narre Warren.
