A 14-year-old Melbourne girl facing more than 100 charges has been let off scot-free because her lawyer says she’s too young to understand the consequences of her actions.

Police say she terrorised the Jewish community in Ripponlea and deliberately ran down a cyclist with a stolen car.

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by Taboola

Cyclist David is still recovering from a brain injury after being mowed down on his bike two months ago.

“I spent a couple of days in the Alfred. I was sort of left with a little bit of cognitive impairment,” he said.

He was riding on St Kilda Street, Brighton, when he was slammed by a stolen car, with the then 13-year-old girl allegedly behind the wheel.

“I was just hunted down. That made a few attempts to knock me over and then, yeah, eventually just completely ran me over,” David said.

The same teenager was allegedly caught on camera terrorising the Jewish community, hurling abuse and driving erratically at Jewish pedestrians.

“They were saying, yeah, you’re f*** Jews, f*** you, go back to your country. Fair, I’m not from here. We’re going to kill you all,” one witness recalled.

Court evidence revealed she had searched on her phone “how long is a sentence for running someone over?” and “where do Jewish people live?”

The fact the teen is now back on the street is seen as a frightening reflection of society, the Jewish community says.

“It speaks to a greater problem in society when you have people this young forming this level of hatred towards their Jewish friends and neighbours,” Council of Australian Jewry’s Alex Ryvchin said.

The girl’s lawyer managed to convince Victoria Police prosecutors that there was too strong a case for the legal principle of Doli Incapax, meaning the accused was not mature enough to understand the consequences of her actions.

“The charges were withdrawn because the police prosecution was unable to rebut the legal presumption that a child aged 13 and under is incapable of committing a criminal offence,” a Victoria Police statement read.

When asked if anything would be done about the legal threshold, Victoria’s Attorney General Sonya Kilkenny said: “So I will do everything to toughen consequences for young offenders to deal with the new types of offending that we are seeing.”

David says he’s case in point.

“I think with violent crimes like weaponising a vehicle and intentionally running someone over, it needs to be sort of taken away from that protection of the law,” he said.