Kmart security video captures tragic siblings' last moments before fatal crash

CCTV captured them leaving the store together. Photo / Angelina Kauffman

An Australian mother has shared video footage of some of the final moments of her two children’s lives, vowing to not let them become “another statistic”.

Sydney mum Angelina Kauffman lost her daughter Alina, 24, and son Ernesto, 15, in a high-speed crash near the family home in September 2023.

She shared footage of the pair leaving a local Kmart, saying it was the “last video of my babies alive”.

The grieving mum said her daughter was picking up her younger brother from his new job at Kmart at Sydney’s Westfield Liverpool.

Video shows the happy pair leaving the store, just 44 minutes before a disqualified driver allegedly crossed the centre line and ploughed into their car at high speed.

The grieving mum told Yahoo! that she went to Kmart to seek the footage because she “just wanted to see my kids”.

Kauffman said going back to Kmart to request the footage was an emotional experience.

“I just wanted to see them alive, because after that the only time I saw them was dead in the morgue.”

After they left the shop the siblings travelled to a nearby McDonald’s, where Alina called her mum to tease her.

“My daughter called me joking saying, ‘Mum I couldn’t find my brother’. I said, ‘what?’, she said ‘no, no, I’m just joking! He’s in the car with me, we’re at McDonald’s’,” Kauffman revealed.

“I said, ‘okay I love you, drive safe’, and they said ‘love you too, Mum’.”

Six minutes later they were dead.

Ernesto and Alina were best friends. Photo / Go FundMe

Police allege that 21-year-old Johnson Kokozian, who had lost his licence, fled the scene after the fatal smash.

Paying tribute to her children, Kauffman told Yahoo! she was still trying to process how and why her kids were so cruelly stolen away, just hundreds of metres from safety.

“They were so close to home … it just doesn’t click in my brain,” Angelina said.

“They weren’t doing anything wrong, they were really, really good people. My daughter last year would’ve been a registered nurse. My son would’ve been in Year 12 and he wanted to be a social worker and help families and children,” she added

“They wanted to do stuff, they wanted to help people.”

‘I’m not going to let my kids down'

Kokozian, who witnesses claim was spirited away from the scene in another car, remains on remand in prison.

Accused of travelling at twice the speed limit on the wrong side of the road, he faces 14 years behind bars if convicted of aggravated dangerous driving occasioning death.

Friends and family accused of helping him face longer sentences, of up to 20 years.

The disparity angers Kauffman.

“He could be out in five years. Five years for taking two lives. How is that justice? There is no justice,” Kaufmann told A Current Affair last year.

Angelina (left) says she won't let her kids become another statistic. Photo / GoFundMe

She has poured her grief into a campaign to increase penalties for serious road crimes, launching a petition and spending day after day at a busy train station to get signatures.

“I can’t rely on the judicial system. I can’t. I’m not going to let my kids down,” she said.

“I made them a promise that I’m going to do this and I’ll change the laws. I will do something for them. I can’t just sit around and do nothing. I can’t and I won’t.”