A truck driver who ran a red light and hit two students outside an Adelaide school, leaving one with a traumatic brain injury, has been ordered to do community service but has avoided jail.

Sang Van Huynh, 61, struck two 16-year-old Marryatville High School students with his truck in March last year, and today faced South Australia’s District Court for sentencing.

Judge Paul Muscat said Huynh had driven through the pedestrian crossing on Kensington Road 4 seconds after the light turned to red, and that Huynh had committed a “gross failure to maintain a lookout”.

The damaged windscreen of the truck following the crash. (ABC News)

He said the “dreams and aspirations” of one of the victims had been left “shattered” by what had happened, and that it was not correct to characterise Huynh’s crime as an “accident”.

Judge Muscat said Huynh had previously been charged with driving without due care in 1992, embezzlement in 1995 and refusing to state his name to police in 2007.

The judge sentenced Huynh — who pleaded guilty to two counts of causing serious harm by dangerous driving — to three years’ imprisonment with a non-parole period of one year and six months.

Two 16-year-olds were hit by a truck at Marryatville in March 2023. (ABC News: Ethan Rix)

The sentence was suspended upon Huynh entering a good behaviour bond of two years.

His licence was suspended for 11 years, and he was also ordered to do 240 hours of community service over nine months.

“Your admitted dangerous driving amounts to a serious crime with a high maximum penalty and lengthy driver’s licence disqualification,” Judge Muscat told Huynh.

“While you did not intend to drive dangerously, and in turn seriously injure the two students, what you did was not merely an accident as it was at times referred to during submissions.”

Paramedics at the scene of the crash on Kensington Road. (ABC News)

The court previously heard Huynh had dodged two cars stopped in the right-hand lane, before he “cut in front of the bus and straight through the traffic light”.

Judge Muscat today said there were other factors including a tree branch obstructing the light and glare from the sun that could have contributed to his inability to stop.

“Your lookout, such as it was, was so grossly defective in the circumstances that it posed a real danger to other persons — in this case the students using the crossing to go to school,” he said.

A school bag and shoes at the scene. (ABC News)

Judge Muscat said one of Huynh’s victims sustained multiple injuries, including a traumatic brain injury.

“His dreams and aspirations for the future have been shattered and that is very unfair for him,” he said.

“The court was presented with a number of victim impact statements.

“Each one … reflects the clear and distressing effects of the terrible consequences suffered not only by the two students directly involved [but] by their immediate and extended families and friends as a result of your gross failure to maintain a lookout when you were driving a truck that morning.”

Huynh leaving court following the sentencing. (ABC News: Marco Catalano)

Judge Muscat took Huynh’s personal circumstances and “remorse” into consideration when sentencing.

He said several things have now been done to the crossing to ensure its safety and that nothing of similar nature happens again.

“It is now virtually impossible for any driver not to see the crossing,” he said.

“Obviously this is a good thing, but as often the case, it came about only after such a tragic event as this one.”

The crash happened at Marryatville in Adelaide’s east in March last year. (ABC News: Ethan Rix)