Littlehampton shooting case: Defence claims victim’s version of events is ‘flawed’
Lawyers for the man who allegedly shot someone in a garage say the forensic evidence doesn’t support the account of the victim – who claims he swung an axe in self-defence.
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The victim of a shooting — who then retaliated with an axe and rendered the alleged shooter a tetraplegic — has told multiple “untruths” about what really happened, a court has heard.
During defence closing submissions, lawyers for the man accused of the October 2017 shooting in a garage at Littlehampton, in the Adelaide Hills, have told a Supreme Court jury the victim’s version of events “cannot be true”.
“(The victim) is not telling the truth and the question that arises from the defence point of view is: ‘what is he covering up?,” Marie Shaw, QC, asked the jury.
“Why does he tell a story that is so at odds with the forensic evidence?
“The obvious explanation, we submit to you, is this: He has to be covering up the fact that this is not self defence when he strikes my client repeatedly in the neck.”
The victim was the new partner of a woman who had recently split with her long-term de facto partner, the alleged shooter who is now a tetraplegic and on trial for attempted murder.
None of the three people involved in the love triangle — who had previously lived together, before the accused man moved out — can be identified due to suppression orders on the case.
During an earlier hearing, the victim told the jury he feared he was going to die and “had to get away or I had to fight” after the accused man shot him from a short distance away with a Winchester Model 70 bolt action repeater-rifle.
He had told the jury it was first aimed at his head, but he pushed it away.
The victim also told the jury that as the accused turned to presumably re-load the gun, he fell to his knees before reaching for a tool, and not knowing what it was, he repeatedly swung it at the accused’s head.
He had said they both fell the ground and he kept swinging.
During her closing submissions, Ms Shaw said the forensic evidence was the pillar on which the case hangs and falls and shows the victim’s version of events was flawed.
“It’s the forensic evidence that shows that not only was there no shot fired in circumstances where the muzzle (of the gun) was within a few centimetres of (the victim’s) body, but it also shows that there could not possibly have been a fear of an immediate threat that required him to bludgeon my client eight times to the head deliberately,” she said.
Instead, she said the forensic and medical evidence showed the victim was shot from at least 3.6m away and suffered a wound “unlikely to have incapacitated him straight away”.
Ms Shaw said blood spatter evidence put the victim near the garage door, from which he could have escaped.
Similarly, she said forensic evidence showed the head of the accused, her client, must have been over an esky like a “guillotine” when he was struck eight times horizontally across the neck — which was an unlikely feat if both men were lying on the ground.
“He must have been standing over my client to ram that axe into my client’s neck eight times in a very localised area. He’s not swinging randomly. He’s not lying on the floor beside him,” Ms Shaw said.
She said the accused suffered wounds up to 7cm deep.
She said it also “beggars belief” the victim had no idea what the tool was, given the two men had talked about it two days earlier when they were in the garage.
Ms Shaw also said it was “a miracle” there were “no spurts of blood” on the rifle, which was found standing upright next to the accused, near where a lot of blood from both men was found.
Both the woman and the accused legally owned guns and had them registered in their names.
Ms Shaw said the accused had no motive for attempting to kill her ex-partner’s new lover, because he was pursuing another woman he met through his work and was “not necessarily an unhappy semi-single man”.
“The suggestion my client had a motive to decide to kill (his ex-partner and the victim) falls to the ground,” she said.
“The future was rosy for (the accused), he had plans, he knew what he wanted.”
She said the woman at the centre of the love triangle had removed $200,000 from a joint mortgage offset account into a personal account and was concerned about the split of the couple’s assets in their separation, even asking the accused’s mother to return his car while he was still sedated in hospital.
The court has previously heard the woman had also been involved with another woman she met through a dating app, who then moved into her home in the weeks after the violent incident.
The Littlehampton woman had denied she and the other woman were in a relationship, or that there had been a plan to suffocate the accused, despite the other woman being spotted outside the accused’s room at Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre.
The jury of six men and six women, who have been hearing evidence for the past month, is expected to begin deliberating its verdict on Friday.