The jury that acquitted a driver over the death of a teenage boy at a hoon event was never told key details about his past, including a Lamborghini crash and allegations involving a toddler.
Bryce James Dridan, 31, of Wendouree, near Ballarat, walked free from the County Court of Victoria on Thursday after being found not guilty of negligently causing the death of 18-year-old Trent DeZoete.
Dridan was driving a modified ute at the Stawell LOO5ENATS event on November 4, 2023, when he struck Mr DeZoete in a crowded public area after the vehicle’s brakes failed.
Mr DeZoete, who was from Pimpinio in western Victoria, suffered catastrophic injuries and died at the scene.
Following a weeks-long trial, the jury took less than a day to deliver its verdict and acquit Dridan.
He was also found not guilty of the alternative charge of dangerous driving causing death.
However, the Daily Mail can reveal jurors were not told that Dridan had previously crashed a $350,000 Lamborghini after losing control of the luxury car.
They also did not hear allegations that he had zip-tied a toddler “for laughs” — charges he was later cleared of in court.
Bryce James Dridan (right) was found not guilty of culpable driving and walked free from court
Dridan’s criminal history shows that he drove the Lamborghini Gallardo into a Ballarat home just four months after Mr DeZoete’s death.
The father of three pleaded guilty in Ballarat Magistrates’ Court on December 18, 2024, to failing to control his vehicle, refusing a drug test and driving without registration plates.
He was fined $1,500 without conviction and disqualified from driving for at least four years because he refused the drug test.
Jurors were also not told that Dridan had allegedly restrained a “distraught” toddler by binding the child’s wrists and ankles with zip ties before filming the incident “for laughs”.
Dridan faced charges of producing and distributing child abuse material, false imprisonment and common law assault.
But in February, Magistrate Julia Barling ruled that the prosecution had no case and found Dridan not guilty of every charge.
Prosecutors alleged Dridan was babysitting the boy, who was about three years old, in May 2025 when he restrained the child’s wrists behind his back and tied his ankles together with zip ties.
He allegedly recorded the child, described by prosecutors as “distraught” and “screaming hysterically”, as he cried for his mother, the Ballarat Courier reported.
Trent DeZoete, 18, died at the scene after being struck by Dridan’s ute
Footage played in court allegedly showed Dridan moving the camera towards the child’s zip-tied limbs while asking: “Who spilled the popcorn?”
He then allegedly sent the video to the child’s mother through Snapchat.
The child’s paternal grandmother alerted police after she saw the footage.
During his police interview, Dridan allegedly said it was ‘just a bit of a laugh’ and that the child had been ‘laughing’ during similar play at an earlier date.
Last week, Dridan’s County Court jury was told Dridan had methamphetamine in his system when he climbed into his heavily modified 2001 Holden Commodore ute with his mate in the passenger seat and roared onto the burnout pad.
Within seconds the brakes failed.
The court heard the rear brake rotors, callipers, pads and the handbrake had all been ripped out.
A fluid line on the front passenger side ruptured under the strain of full-lock steering and the pedal went soft.
Dridan crashed a Lamborghini Gallardo into a Ballarat home just four months after killing Mr DeZoete
Dridan’s crash in the luxury supercar was shared on social media
The court heard Dridan pumped the brakes, yanked the handbrake and even switched the engine off, but the Commodore powered forward.
Crown prosecutor John Dickie told the jury fire marshals waved frantically and yelled for him to stop.
One had the car brush his leg while it ran over the foot of another, he said.
Witnesses said the ute accelerated off the pad, well above the strict 5km/h ‘walking pace’ limit, blasted past the fire marshal zone, missed the left-hand turn back to the pits and careered straight into the crowded food-court area.
Mr DeZoete was walking in with a mate who leapt clear and screamed a warning to the teen, but he had no time to react.
The court heard the bonnet-less Commodore smashed into him, threw him onto the engine bay, then dragged him under the front as the car finally began to slow.
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Bystanders frantically lifted the ute off the dying teenager and first aid was started on the spot. Mr DeZoete was pronounced dead at the scene.
A roadside oral fluid test on Dridan came back positive for methylamphetamine.
The ute which killed Trent DeZoete in the burnout event tragedy. Video posted to social media showed it in action in 2020
A blood sample taken later that evening showed 0.20 mg/L – a level experts said was high enough to seriously impair driving skills and create a significant public risk.
Dridan admitted to police he had taken ‘a bit of f****n’… cocaine, I don’t know’ the previous weekend.
He told officers at the scene he had ‘lost his brakes’ and ‘couldn’t do anything’.
In a formal interview he made no comment.
Mr Dickie argued a lethal combination of meth-impaired driving, knowingly continuing once the brakes had failed, and ploughing into a pedestrian zone instead of slamming into safety barriers or tyres amounted to criminal negligence.
‘It was inevitable, if not a very real and significant risk, that a person would be hit outside the arena and cause serious injury or lose their life,’ he said.
‘There were options available to the accused to slow down or stop his car on that skid pad.’
Prosecutors said Dridan had a ‘long, long history of drug use’ and allegedly received 10 penalty notices in the past decade or so for various actions, including driving without P-plates, using a mobile phone, speeding four times, and having an unrestrained passenger under 16, the Herald Sun reported.
The Pimpinio Football and Netball Club paid tribute to Mr DeZoete following his tragic death
They said three of his vehicles had been seized as evidence or impounded, but that Dridan had access to a large number of cars through his work as a self-employed mechanic.
Dridan’s lawyer Alexander Patton told the jury the incident was caused by a ‘complete absence of safety features’ by the event organisers.
Mr Patton questioned why the exit to the burnout arena led into a heavily frequented area where cars shared the road with pedestrians.
‘The only thing separating (pedestrians and vehicles) was a single plastic bollard with a bit of bunting tied to it,’ he said.
‘Where was the safety marshal, where were the safety barriers, where were barriers stopping out-of-control cars from entering the food court?’
Mr Patton claimed a caravan had been blocking Dridan’s access to the pit stop area and that numerous cars had been allowed to drive away from the arena without tyres or with loose parts attached.
He also rejected an argument that Dridan, who was carrying a passenger with terminal cancer, should have deliberately crashed his car in the arena to bring it to a stop.
‘It happened in seconds,’ Mr Patton said.
A mugshot of Dridan released by police when he escaped custody after being denied bail
‘He does everything possible to avoid driving out of that arena … he pumps the brakes, turns off the engines, tries to brake, but there’s nothing else he can do.’
‘The prosecution says he should have crashed into tyres … it is not that simple, you cannot assess Bryce Dridan’s driving with the benefit of perfect hindsight.’
Mr Patton further disputed that his client was affected by methamphetamine at the time of the event.
While the drug was found in Dridan’s system after the crash, Mr Patton said he had not used methamphetamine on the day and argued that his client’s behaviour before the event suggested he was unaffected by any substances.
On Friday, the jury’s decision sparked a furious backlash from alleged witnesses to the incident.
‘I was also there and that is BS – cars don’t drive through the food area,’ one attendee claimed on social media.
‘There is a road next to the food area that every other car takes.’
Another added: ‘That fire marshal only got clipped by him due to him pulling my son out of the way as he left the pad.
‘He had all the opportunity to not leave the area and endanger the public.
‘There were tyres surrounding the pad he could have used, and then all the old speedway area to drive around till his brain realised to shut the car off.
‘Concrete walls lining the speedway he could have put it against …
‘[There were] plenty of other ways he could of done instead of driving through the food court full of innocent people and kids.’
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