WHAT PRICE A LIFE?

I suppose this goes into the: ‘What price a life?’ file. Three men who were involved in the brutal death of another man at Diggers Rest have walked free, sentenced only to community service, after pleading guilty to the almost old-fashioned crime of ‘affray’. Quaint word ‘affray’. Look it up in the dictionary. A ‘disturbance or breach of the peace.' A brawl or a fight or a fray.

That’s what they got charged with. They could have been charged with murder. They should have been charged, at least, as accessories to murder. Or the equivalent.

Especially when you hear what happened. Their names are Darko Jozic, Timothy Lutze and Joseph Ferraro. They were among a dozen men who went to a football ground at Diggers Rest in February with the intention of starting a brawl.

They were there when their friends talked about ‘getting these guys’ and loaded their cars with weapons including Molotov cocktails and knives and then drove them to the ground.

Sure they stayed in their cars while the attack took place but does the wheelman in a bank robbery walk free? Because he stayed in the getaway car?

Supreme Court Judge Paul Coghlan said what happened next was ‘a senseless and cowardly example of mob violence’.

One Diggers Rest man, 20-year-old Nathan Roberts-Nunan, was stabbed to death.  Another young man, Stephen Thorneycroft was critically injured.

The judge obviously thought of the consequences of what the trio did. He said that by staying in their cars they were ‘a few hundred metres from being charged with murder’. But the question remains unanswered: Were they told to stay with the cars for a quick getaway if things went wrong?

Eight men and one youth are charged with murder and attempted murder.  The trio who pleaded guilty to affray and got 400 hours of community service –grass cutting etcetera – no doubt had taken into consideration the fact that they will appear as prosecution  witnesses at the murder trials.

But you are still entitled to ask, as is the dead man’s family: What price a life?

Friday, September 25, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009