Grieving father Danny Abdallah sits down with Samuel Davidson, five years after he killed four children by driving drunk and on drugs

The father who lost his three children and their cousin to a drunk and drug-affected driver has sat down with the man who took their lives — declaring he would let the killer out of prison now if he could.

Samuel William Davidson, 35, was three times over the legal alcohol limit, on drugs and out of control when he mowed down seven children in Oatlands, in Sydney’s northwest, in February, 2020.

Siblings Antony (13), Angelina (12), and Sienna (8), along with their cousin Veronique Sakr (11), were all killed instantly.

Davidson was sentenced on appeal to 20 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 15 years.

In an unprecedented interview with 7NEWS Spotlight, Davidson sat down with Danny Abdallah — the father of Antony, Angelina and Sienna.

The grieving father went inside the maximum security prison, two hours outside of Sydney, to confront his children’s killer.

Despite the devastation suffered by the two families who lost their children, Abdallah has chosen to forgive.

Abdallah and his wife Leila fronted the media shortly after the deadly crash to publicly offer their forgiveness to Davidson.

But on tonight’s episode, Abdallah went one step further — declaring he would let Davidson out of prison if he could.

Davidson has more than a decade left until he can apply for parole, having already served five years.

“If it was up to me, I’ll bring him out tomorrow. I know the guy,” Abdallah said.

“Justice is to have my kids back. That’s all. If you’ve got one day or you’ve got a hundred years, it’s not going to change how I feel.”

Davidson praised Abdallah’s admission he would let him go free.

“That’s really going the extra mile. He is just, he’s one in a million. Just an absolutely amazing man,” he said.

But when asked if he thought he deserved to be let out, Davidson said no.

“I don’t think I deserve that. It was an accident and I didn’t mean it, but I’m at fault and I’ve done that,” he said.

“I don’t believe I deserve any ... him even talking to me was a blessing. I was just happy with that. He keeps amazing me. He’s just an incredible person and I just want to be everything like him.”

7NEWS Spotlight host Michael Usher went inside the prison with Abdallah for the sitdown, asking Davidson if he had apologised to the grieving father.

“I have. And I’ll do it again,” Davidson said.

“Danny, I’m really sorry to you and your whole family for what I’ve done and all your friends, and I’m also sorry to all the emergency services that turned up to that day and had to deal with what they dealt with.

“And I’m sorry to everyone, even the neighbours that were on the scene, everyone that I’ve affected, I apologise.

“And I’m deeply sorry. And I regret it for the rest of my life.”

In response to Davidson apologising to the grieving father, Abdallah said he had already made peace with his children’s killer.

“I’ve forgiven you already. Thanks, brother,” he responded.

Before their meeting on 7NEWS Spotlight, the two men had met privately, sitting down together as part of Corrective Services NSW’s restorative justice program.

Abdallah said the first meeting was difficult.

“It was nerve-racking. It was harder than I thought,” he told 7NEWS Spotlight.

“It was a moment where I saw a person that’s probably living with the pain of killing four children and giving one child brain damage.

“Putting my parent hat aside, I could see that he’s living in a place of guilt, and I always say, if I had to give him a gun and say, ‘you either shoot those kids or shoot yourself’, he’d probably say, ‘I’ll shoot myself instead.’

“So what do I do with that? Do I just keep hurting him? Do I keep hating him? What’s it going to do? It’s not going to do anything.”

With more than a decade left on his sentence, Davidson told 7NEWS Spotlight he was focused on staying busy and keeping his cell clean.

“I do try and keep it that way because I just think it looks better and yeah, it just makes it more homely. Yeah, I was like that on the outside too,” he said.

Davidson spends up to 17 hours a day inside his cell with guards locking the inmates in by 3.30pm and then releasing them the next day by 6.30am.

“Usually the doors get cracked in the morning,” he said.

NSW Deputy Correctives Commissioner Leon Taylor said Davidson was put in a separate protection wing when he arrived.

“He [Samuel) spent quite a bit of time on a protective custody order. So in those years he was by himself without any association for his protection with other prisoners, given the nature of his offence and his profile while he was going through the court system,” Taylor said.

In the 7NEWS Spotlight interview, Davidson also spoke about the events leading up to the crash.

“I started drinking and I can’t remember much,” he said.

“The boys I was living with, they all got home, we all got into it, and yeah (it’s) pretty blurry from there.”

Davidson said he was waiting to turn at a traffic light that was “taking forever” to turn green.

“I’m not even sure why on Earth we were driving, I just know that we ran the red light,” he said.

“We had no control over the car.

“(I) took the corner so fast that not even a racecar driver could’ve pulled that off in a professional car, so it was just never going to happen.”

Reflecting on his past, Davidson said he used to look forward to getting drunk with his mates every weekend.

“It’s a shame that I had to enjoy life under the influence of alcohol or anything like that to enjoy it, because I can tell you my thoughts about that are completely different now.”