Term for WA driver who killed boy appealed

The father of a five-year-old boy who died after a career criminal crashed a stolen car into their family's stationary van has welcomed an appeal against the perpetrator's sentence, saying it was "far too lenient".

Matthew David Molloy, 36, was recently sentenced to a minimum jail term of five-and-a-half years over the crash on December 29 last year, which killed Leonardus Tjandra and seriously injured six members of his family, including his six-year-old brother Franciscus.

After Western Australia's Director of Public Prosecutions confirmed an appeal had been lodged, the boy's father Edwin Tjandra told 6PR radio he was shocked by the sentence and Molloy should have got "at least one year for each page" of his 41-page criminal record.