Tyrell Cobb death: Prosecutors accused of going ‘soft’ on child killers as man walks free
UPDATE: ‘Grin Reaper’ Matthew Scown was no longer laughing when a friend dropped him at a Sunshine Coast house this afternoon.
Crime & Justice
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UPDATE: ‘Grin Reaper’ Matthew Scown was no longer laughing when a friend attempted to drop him at a Sunshine Coast address this afternoon.
Scown scrambled in to the small sedan that then tore across the car park of the Maroochydore unit complex and down the street as the driver shouted abuse at The Courier-Mail.
The driver shouted the public had not been told “the truth” as a slightly smirking Scown was whisked away.
Scown refuses to answer questions about why he was laughing after walking free in a sentence that has outraged victims groups.
One neighbour said he had done his time and should be left alone.
Channel 7 is reporting that Scown’s family claims he was laughing at a cameraman who fell over and he has been depicted like a “monster”.
Footage shows him grinning to reporters as he walked out of court before he bursts into loud laughter at the cameraman’s mishap.
EARLIER: Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has slammed a man who watched a little boy die and laughed as he left court with a four-year sentence as “completely insensitive” and says the Attorney-General will look at the case.
Ms Palaszczuk appeared on The Today Show this morning and Karl Stefanovic grilled her about the case of Matthew Scown, who laughed as he walked free from court on a suspended sentence yesterday over the death of four-year-old Tyrell Cobb.
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“I think he was completely insensitive, completely insensitive,” she said.
“(His behaviour was) absolutely unacceptable and I think everybody is feeling that today.”
She said she was “quite sure” the Attorney-General would look at the case.
“So they’re looking at it?,” Stefanovic pushed.
The premier replied: “Absolutely”.
Ms Palaszczuk’s comments follow revelations by The Courier-Mail that prosecutors have been accused of going soft on child killers and using plea bargains to accelerate cases after Scown was allowed to walk free from court despite pleading guilty for his part in the horrific death of Tyrell.
Little Tyrell died in terrible pain from a blunt-force trauma injury on the Gold Coast in 2009, with his tiny, battered body suffering 53 bruises and 17 abrasions.
Scown, who watched Tyrell die without seeking help, grinned as he walked free from the Supreme Court in Brisbane yesterday after his four-year sentence for pleading guilty to manslaughter was suspended because he has served almost three years on remand.
Bravehearts founder Hetty Johnston slammed the Director of Public Prosecutions for downgrading the charge from murder after a spate of similar cases have left offenders “laughing” at the system.
“They’re doing all these plea bargains just to move cases through ... (it’s) expedition at the cost of these kids,” she said. “I think if the DPP had the resources and the backbone they should have gone for him (Scown).”
Her criticism comes after numerous child killers have been handed reduced charges including a man who tortured his four-week-old daughter to death and a woman who beat her child with a vacuum cleaner.
Queensland Homicide Victims Support Group general manager Brett Thompson said prosecutors and police “work themselves to the bone”, and the issue would be raised at a coming meeting with the Queensland Law Society.
It was not alleged Scown caused the fatal blunt-force trauma injury to Tyrell, rather he failed to seek medical help as the child’s health deteriorated. Tyrell was the son of Scown’s then-girlfriend. Scown raised concerns about the boy’s condition two weeks before he eventually phoned Triple 0 on May 24, 2009 when he was alone with the boy and he started vomiting bile.
Scown was charged with murder a day after the boy’s death in 2009, only for the case to be dismissed at a committal hearing in 2010.
A spokesperson for the Office of the DPP said after Scown was rearrested in 2015, a decision was made to withdraw the murder charge given the “state of the evidence” at a committal hearing last year. The decision was made in consultation with the family and resourcing was not a factor, the spokesperson said.
Justice Martin Burns said he did not know how Scown, who claimed not a day has gone by that he hadn’t thought about Tyrell, could come to grips with his failure.
“The horror of all of this is that the injuries Tyrell sustained were treatable and that he would have survived if he received treatment,” he said.
Tyrell’s mother, Heidi Strbak, is due to face a manslaughter trial next month.
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