Johnson Kokozian pleaded guilty to his role in the crash. Photo / Facebook
In the hours after Johnson Kokozian veered on to the wrong side of a southwestern Sydney road, senselessly killing a brother and sister in a horrific head-on collision and fleeing the scene, he filmed himself eating KFC.
“Mark my words, this is the last KFC I’ll be eating for another 20 years,” he said in the video he posted to Snapchat.
Kokozian is about to learn exactly when he’ll next taste freedom after pleading guilty on Wednesday to causing the crash in southwestern Sydney in September, 2023 which claimed the lives of Alina Kauffman, 24, and her brother Ernesto Salazar, 15.
According to documents tendered to the Campbelltown Local Court, Kokozian was speeding behind the wheel of his luxury, high-powered Mercedes SUV – which he had bought just hours earlier – when he swerved on to the wrong side of Sadleir Ave, Heckenberg, on the evening of September 1, 2023.
At the time Alina and Ernesto were just arriving home in her Toyota Echo after she had picked up her teenage brother from his part-time job at Kmart and collected dinner.
Their mother, Angelina Kauffman, was inside Campbelltown Court House on Wednesday as Kokozian entered guilty pleas to two counts of aggravated dangerous driving occasioning death and two counts of failing to stop and assist after vehicle impact causing death.
He also had several charges withdrawn including two counts of manslaughter and one count of negligent driving.
“I don’t know how these people can sleep at night. I pray the courts give my kids the justice they deserve, because they didn’t deserve to die,” Kauffman said outside court.
Kokozian has been in custody since his arrest and his guilty pleas came less than a week out from the second anniversary of the crash.
A statement of agreed facts tendered to the court following Kokozian’s guilty plea revealed how he was driving erratically in the moments leading up to the crash, how he fled the scene and repeatedly lied to officers about who was behind the wheel.
At the time of the accident, his licence had been suspended for five months.
He picked up the black Mercedes AMG that day and was driving with two friends, including Cruz Davis-Tuka, who, on Wednesday, pleaded guilty to lying to police during their investigation.
While driving, one of his passengers thought he had seen an unmarked police car and yelled out “cops”, prompting Kokozian to speed as he turned into Sadleir Ave.
The court documents describe how Kokozian followed a white Volkswagen closely along Sadleir Ave.
And as he came to the crest of a hill, he suddenly swerved on to the wrong side of the road in an attempt to overtake the other vehicle, crashing head-on with Alina Kauffman’s car.
The Mercedes rolled over and came to rest against a Toyota Rav4 which was parked on the side of the road.
Analysis of CCTV determined that he was travelling as fast as 109km/h at the point of impact.
A witness saw the three men climb out of the vehicle and two of them approach the Echo.
They then asked a bystander to drive them to hospital.
While being taken to hospital by the man, Kokozian was heard making a phone call and saying “I crashed the car” and “what do you mean there is no f***ing insurance on it?”
The bystander attempted to drive them on the most direct route to Liverpool Hospital but the men repeatedly told him to turn the other way and directed him to Lamont Place, Cartwright, where Kokozian’s father lived.
During the car ride, he told another person on Instagram chat: “I f** my car … Flipped the new amg”.
He added: “I (sic) getting locked up for long.”
Later, Kokozian became angry with his passenger who had said he had seen the cops and demanded he sign over his car to him, according to the court documents.
He also told other people that he needed “15k for a lawyer and 80k for the insurance for the car”.
Kokozian continued to text and call the other passenger, demanding he sign over his car and threatened to tell others that he had been driving.
But the other man went to police where he made a statement about the crash.
When Kokozian was arrested he was “extremely agitated”, acted aggressively towards police and kicked the walls and hit the doors of the custody room before complaining about an injured foot and asking to be taken to hospital.
During a rambling statement to police he claimed he was “off my head” at the time, claimed someone named “Kamier” was the driver, as he repeatedly denied responsibility.
When pressed again by officers for the name of the driver he said: “His name, what did I say? F*** let me think cause my brain like I’ll be honest with you, Kamier, I think his name is like Abdul or Ali or something. I don’t wanna lie to you, you know what I mean.”
Police were shown videos from Kokozian’s Snapchat account – which had the username “Hung Jason” – including one in which he held up a box of KFC that he was eating.
In one video he wrote “I’m gone” as he drove past multiple police cars on a street.
In another video, he claimed: “I didn’t even do nothing, my car got stolen.”
He will now return to court next month before he faces sentencing at a later date.
Davis-Tuka, who was a passenger in the black Mercedes, also appeared in Campbelltown Local Court on Wednesday where he pleaded guilty to lying to police during their investigation into the accident.
He pleaded guilty to hindering an investigation into a serious indictable offence and concealing a serious indictable offence.
The court was told that he and the other people in the car ran away after the crash and prosecutors argue he must have known that Alina had died.
During the investigation, he also told officers that another person, and not Kokozian, was driving the vehicle on the night of the crash.
He will return to court in September for sentencing.
Kokozian’s partner, Tiana Savignano, on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to charges of concealing a serious indictable offence and hindering an investigation into a serious indictable offence.
She will fight the charges at a hearing at a later date.
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