Dramatic police bodycam footage has emerged of the moment a seriously disabled man in distress was rescued from a locked car on a sweltering hot day in the middle of summer.
Former NDIS carer Tsz Wing Tam, 37, left his client Jefferson Do, 26, alone inside a hot car at Joondalup Shopping Centre in Perth on a 41C day, while he went shopping with his client’s money.
Mr Do, who requires around-the-clock care for non-verbal autism, was abandoned and left fastened in the backseat for two hours on January 13- one of the hottest days in Perth this year.
Passers-by spotted a visibly distraught Mr Do struggling and beating his chest inside the car, with only a tiny gap in a front window allowing air in, and alerted security staff.
The police bodycam footage can now be aired after Tam pleaded guilty and was recently sentenced.
Mr Do’s grateful family have since thanked first responders for their swift actions that saved his life after watching the confronting footage.
The footage showed the moment police rushed to Mr Do’s aid as they desperately tried to unlock the car.
‘Hey mate, can you open the door please?’ a concerned officer asked him.
A distressed Mr Do was seen thrashing around around inside as police scrambled to break the window open and unlock the door.
‘Are you okay? You are you hot?’ the officer asks as he handed him a bottle of water.
‘There you go, get that into you.’
Mr Do grabbed the bottle and started drinking thirstily.
The footage later showed him treated treated by paramedics and being loaded onto a stretcher to be taken to hospital for a check-up
Mr Do’s sister Fiona said the footage was tough to watch.
‘It was very confronting, they gave him medical attention straight away, they escalated it to security, to police and got him to the hospital, I think that pretty much saved his life,’ she told Nine News.
Mr Do’s brother Harry also thanked the emergency workers.
‘Just wanted to really thank the security guards the police and the paramedics for all their efforts and being on duty that day to look out for my brother,’ he said.
Tam pleaded guilty to stealing and endangering the life of another person in May before he was handed a 12-month suspended sentence the following month.
But Harry fears the penalty is too lenient to dissuade other NDIS carers from committing similar offences.
‘People that’re probably offending at the moment are not going to be scared because they’re just going to get a slap on the wrist as well,’ he said.
Tam had worked with the Do family for eight years, and had even joined them on holidays.
When Tam pleaded guilty in May, Mr Do’s family hoped he would be punished appropriately.
‘The damage has been done, we will never trust another carer in the same way that we did,’ his brother Harry told reporters outside court at the time.
‘It’s really heartbreaking for our family to know that we trusted someone, and we got taken advantage of.’
The former NDIS worker cared for Mr Do four days a week for seven of the eight years he cared for him, the court heard during sentencing, WA Today reported.
Tam regularly took Mr Do to shopping centres and on that day in January, had been asked to take him out for lunch and socialisation.
Mr Do’s mother gave her son money for the outing, which Tam later used to buy ice cream and chips for himself, the court heard.
While Magistrate Raelene Johnston accepted that he did not intend to harm Mr Do, she said that Tam showed a ‘complete disregard’ of his client’s vulnerability for his own ‘selfish purposes’.
She also described Tam’s decision to spend his client’s money to buy himself lunch as ‘disgraceful’ and ‘selfish’.