Rohan Dennis has entered a guilty plea to an aggravated charge of creating likelihood of harm in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Tuesday and will later face sentencing at the District Court over the charge, according to ABC News.
Charges were laid against Dennis earlier this year as he was allegedly driving a car which struck Melissa Hoskins. Hoskins, who was married to Dennis, was taken to hospital after being hit and died the next day.
The original charges listed for Tuesday’s hearing, which had been delayed for six weeks to allow for further negotiations, were causing death by dangerous driving and an aggravated offence of driving without due care. Both these charges were dropped.
ABC News said the court heard that “prosecutors accepted the plea to the new charge because Dennis was reckless, and did not intend to kill his wife”.
The aggravated charge of creating likelihood of harm that Dennis entered a guilty plea to on Tuesday comes with a maximum jail term of seven years according to the latest version of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935. Under the previous, now dropped, charges the maximum had been 15 years in prison.
When the incident that resulted in Hoskins' death occurred the then 32-year-old and Dennis had just moved back to Adelaide with their two children as he had just retired from professional cycling after a career which included two world time trial titles.
A wave of grief and shock washed through the cycling community after the death of Hoskins, who had raced on the track and road until retiring in 2017. She competed in the Team Pursuit for Australia at two Olympic Games and took a world title in the event in 2015.
