A driver due to face court later this month over a hit-run crash with a bike rider has been jailed for more than six years on serious unrelated offences.
Leanne De Baize, 43, of Dandenong pleaded guilty in the County Court to a string of charges including threats to kill, intentionally causing serious injury, theft and unlicensed driving. She had assaulted an elderly relative.
A year earlier, in 2023, De Baize allegedly struck a cyclist with her car on Douglas Street, Noble Park. The incident, recorded on widely circulated video, showed her car slowing down to allow the rider to pass her on the inside before speeding up and steering into him.
In relation to that incident she was charged with reckless conduct endangering death, intentionally causing injury, intentionally damaging property, failing to stop at an accident and failing to report the accident to police.
That matter returns to court on 21 October 2025.
In the case involving the assault on the relative, the County Court was told De Baize was unfit for police interview as she was coming down off ice and suffering hallucinations.
She later told police that her brain was hacked, her phone was hacked and that the country was being taken over by foreign people.
Judge Patricia Riddell sentenced De Baize to six and a half years in prison with a four-year non-parole period.
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