In a drunken moment, lives can be irreversibly changed — or ended. Suddenly a night out goes from fairytale to horror story.
Surveys conducted over the past decade show 40 per cent of Australians aged between 12 and 17 have consumed a full-strength alcoholic drink, and 10 per cent admitted to binge drinking.
It comes as no surprise; for good or for ill, alcohol is an intrinsic part of the Australian identity. In the vast majority of cases, excessive drinking poses a danger to no one save the person holding the glass.
But just as violent video games can desensitise and affect the vulnerable mind, so too can alcohol turn a young person’s thoughts toward aggression and retaliation for slights both real and imagined.
Anti-drinking messages and campaigns such as News Corp Australia’s “Real Heroes Walk Away” attempt to mitigate the damage, as does legislation such as the South Australian Government’s 3am “liquor lockout” law.
In New South Wales, the July 2012 death of Thomas Kelly and the January 2013 death of teenager Daniel Christie, both from drunken punches, prompted the introduction of a mandatory eight-year minimum sentence for deadly alcohol-fuelled assaults.
It also triggered a language change: what had been known for years as a “king hit” was renamed “the coward punch” by an incensed public.
Sadly those initiatives, while laudable, did nothing to spare the victims of Cassandra McKechnie, James Dix and Damien Rochester. They did not save a young musician from permanent disfigurement at the hands of Aaron Savcic — an older man who should have known better due to his own experience with violence. And it did not save Lewis McPherson, a gentle and adored high school graduate, from the drunken, drugged excesses of gun-wielding thug Liam Humbles.
Lewis McPherson and his killer, Liam Humbles.
LIAM HUMBLES
THEY shared a school, but 17-year-olds Lewis McPherson and Liam Humbles had nothing else in common. Humbles was a troubled child, scrawny with red hair and freckles. His home life was so dysfunctional that his parents took out a restraining order against him.
Adrift, Humbles couch-surfed from friend’s place to friend’s place, paying his way by selling drugs. He carried a small handgun at all times to protect himself from “older people” he feared would “bully him”.
Lewis, conversely, was a suntanned, good-looking, popular sportsman with enough laughs and smiles for everyone.
He divided his time between the homes of his mother and father, each of whom doted on him and encouraged him to do his best. Such security would breed arrogance in some — in Lewis, it created a truly gentle soul.
He watched Humbles from afar, aware of his difficulties but never judging his peer for them. “Someday,” he would tell his friends, “Liam will be good to this earth.”
On New Year’s Eve, 2012, Humbles shattered Lewis’ dreams for his future — and ended the teenager’s life — in a hail of .22 calibre bullets.
The way their paths crossed that night spoke of their differing lifestyles. Lewis and his best friends, James Lamont and Liam Trewartha, were heading for a New Year’s Eve party at Warradale. His mother, Kimberly, had farewelled them at the door.
Lewis’ father, Mark, sent an SMS telling the young man to have fun and stay safe. Intending to drink, they chose to walk to the event and keep themselves out of trouble.
Tragically, the path they had chosen would take them directly into the line of fire. In a house further up the street, Humbles was arguing with his friends.
He’d passed out drunk while a drug buy was taking place elsewhere in the house, and the deal had gone sour.
Humbles’ friends wanted him to settle the dispute with his pistol. He refused and a fight broke out.
Ejected from the house, grossly affected by cannabis, afflicted by a blood-alcohol level of 0.25, a dishevelled and shirtless Humbles came across Lewis, Mr Lamont and Mr Trewartha.
“I greeted him with ‘what’s up?’ and his response was ‘f--cking c--ts’ ,” Mr Lamont would later tell Humbles’ trial. “They were his only words. He pointed the gun at me first, he probably would have been 2m away. He was moving directly toward us and fired one shot at me, two at Lewis, and I heard another pop.”
A notoriously inaccurate weapon, the .22 missed both Mr Lamont and Mr Trewartha.
“There was a smoothness in his actions, no ‘should I do this?’,” Mr Lamont continued. “It was just load, straighten, pop-pop-pop-pop.”
One of those shots struck Lewis in the right upper chest and he fell back, unable to scream.
“I rushed to his side and held him in my hands and tried to keep him from choking on his blood, because he was losing blood,” Mr Lamont explained.
Humbles staggered away for a short time — taking potshots at a passing car — before returning and making a beeline for Lewis.
Mr Lamont and Mr Trewartha had no choice but to flee as the drunken gunman pressed his weapon into Lewis’ stomach.
If you don’t stop being dead,” he slurred, “I’ll make you really dead.”
Humbles’ arrest video is harrowing viewing. His eyes are unfocused and his eyelids half-closed. He is unsteady on his feet and his face is covered in blood. Told he is under arrest, his only response is to grunt incomprehensibly.
Asked if he wants to call someone, he admits he has no one to call. Later, at a police station, he is told he is being charged with murder and replies: “Guess I’m not going home.”
Humbles would go on to plead not guilty to Lewis’ murder — and to attempting to murder Mr Lamont and Mr Trewartha — though he did not deny he had shot at them.
Instead, Humbles insisted he was so grossly intoxicated that he was unable to form the specific intent to kill. His crime, he said, was the lesser charge of manslaughter, not murder.
Weeks of legal argument failed to sway Supreme Court Justice Michael David, who found him guilty of all charges and ordered he spend at least 24 years behind bars.
“You intended to kill them all,” he declared. “The concept that a young person might think they have to carry a weapon with them for self-protection is appalling, frightening and has no place in our society. This was an appalling, wanton crime. Disastrous as it was, it could have been even worse and three, perhaps four, people could have been killed that evening.”
Justice David also took the unusual step of lifting statutory suppression orders banning publication of Humbles’ identity, ensuring his arrest video could be seen — and others deterred from aping his booze-addled actions.
In the wake of the sentencing, Mark McPherson called for mandatory minimum sentencing of those who misuse firearms.
“(Humbles’) lack of contrition is disturbing and hurtful … I just don’t know what goes on in his head,” he said.
But he also acknowledged Lewis would have wanted Humbles to undergo counselling in prison — to receive education to better himself.
“Lewis only hoped for good for everybody, that’s just the sort of person he was,” he said. “He would probably be the first to say ‘I hope it works out for Liam’.”
AARON SAVCIC
IN Aaron Savcic’s world, the way to defend yourself from an angry man is to break a full glass of beer across his face.
It doesn’t matter, in Aaron Savcic’s world, if the man is permanently disfigured, suffers damage to his self-confidence or requires surgery to piece his face back together. All that matters is you have defended yourself against an aggressor.
On the surface, Savcic’s crime appeared to be that of any drunken, insight-lacking 33-year-old at the end of a bad day.
In May 2011 his business was experiencing financial difficulties and he was having trouble with his wife. He had gone to The Lion hotel, in North Adelaide, to knock back a couple and relax. He’d tried to dance with an attractive young lady named Rachel Cearns. Yes, he’d gotten a bit too handy in the process, grabbing her wrists and her bottom when she tried to move away.
Her boyfriend, Dusty Stephenson, had been performing at the time and had pushed Savcic away. They had remonstrated later, at the front bar, and when Stephenson had pushed him again, Savcic had struck back. He hadn’t realised there was a full glass of beer in his hand before he swung, he later claimed. Just another booze-afflicted night in the city.
Yet Savcic’s crime ran deeper, both in terms of its effect and its genesis.
Of all the people in The Lion that night, Savcic should have been the last to take up arms. He should have been the last to resort to violence. Because, of all the people in the bar that night, Savcic was the one who had endured a lifetime under the shadow of domestic abuse.
Savcic had grown up in the Riverland. His father, Mark, was an unpleasant, domineering, heavy-drinking fruit farmer.
For 19 years, Mark eased his frustrations by strangling Savcic’s mother, Gwenda, with his bare hands or pulling her hair. She endured it stoically for the sake of Savcic and his siblings but, in March 2003, Mark came at her with a 1m samurai sword.
Gwenda survived the ensuing scuffle — Mark did not. He died, impaled on the sword he had tried to use against his wife.
A jury would acquit Gwenda of murder but find her guilty of manslaughter, ruling she had acted in “excessive self-defence”.
The late Justice Ted Mullighan showed mercy, suspending Gwenda’s sentence and allowing her to return home.
The District Court jury that heard Savcic’s trial knew none of this. They took just 90 minutes to reject his claims of self-defence and find him guilty of intentionally causing Mr Stephenson serious harm.
However, Judge Rosemary Davey knew all about Savcic’s history, thanks to psychological reports.
“Does your client accept the verdict of the jury?” she asked his counsel. “Does he accept his moral and lawful responsibility for the harm he caused?”
Savcic’s counsel was at pains to emphasise the influence of the past upon the present.
“He has a background of extreme and perpetual violence,” Grant Algie, SC, submitted. “Because of that, when he has a perception of violence he also has the capacity and tendency to overreact, in the context of alcohol use and abuse.
“He does not appear to share characteristics with career criminals or psychotic, anti-social individuals.”
That, Judge Davey noted dryly, might explain Savcic’s conviction for near-identical offending four years earlier.
In the end, Savcic’s psychological submissions had as much effect as his guilty plea. In December last year Judge Davey jailed him for five and a half years, saying he was undoubtedly the aggressor that night and had spent the time since trying to minimise his culpability.
For Mr Stephenson — who had only recently found the courage to return to the stage — the decision was empowering.
“I’m back on track after a couple of shaky years,” he said.
“The sentence is great. In a lot of these cases the victim can come out disappointed, but that was a good bit of justice.”
Damien Rochester, James Dix and Cassandra McKechnie ... convicted over bus brawl.
CASSANDRA McKECHNIE, JAMES DIX AND DAMIEN ROCHESTER
SOMETIMES the consequences of drunken violence aren’t catastrophic — nobody dies or suffers hideous injury — but there is always a price.
The problem of boozed-up aggressors makes too many headlines and seems to be getting worse. Consider the story of Cassandra McKechnie, James Dix and Damien Rochester:
It’s late on AFL Grand Final day, 2012. The bus is crowded and most of its occupants are young people heading out for a night on the town. There’s conversation and some light swearing.
It seems to be just a normal run-of-the-mill bus trip.
But look closer — beneath the young people crowded around the centre exit is an older man. It’s hard to tell at first, but he is being repeatedly kicked by two men in jeans and a girl in a yellow dress. Eventually he struggles free of the stomp circle and pulls himself onto a seat, clutching his eye to staunch blood flowing from a fresh wound.
One of his attackers abuses him as he composes himself, another starts wrestling with two other men — punching them in the face and gouging at their eyes.
It’s a confronting scene, only some of which is caught by the bus’ CCTV camera.
An alternate angle shows the victims — Freddrick Ettridge, Lindsay “Jim” Richardson and others — doing what they can to defend themselves, or fighting back as best they’re able.
The aggression displayed by the attackers — James Cameron Dix, Damien Rochester and Cassandra Anne McKechnie — is frightening. Though younger and smaller than those they’ve abused, they effortlessly intimidate the older men with fierce growls, shouting and heavy-handed blows.
“It was pandemonium on that bus, it was chaos,” prosecutor Liz Ferris would later tell the District Court. “It was a situation that should never have happened. This type of behaviour on public transport, in any circumstances, cannot be condoned.”
McKechnie, 20, Dix, 22, and Rochester, 22, would eventually plead guilty to charges of assault. They had started drinking before boarding the bus and heading to the city. The plan was to celebrate McKechnie’s birthday — she had turned 19 that day.
The men they assaulted were old enough to be the trio’s fathers and grandfathers.
That didn’t seem to matter and one of the victims sustained a fractured eye socket and jaw.
Thanks to you cowards I now walk through life in apprehension and fear”
one of the victims, who asked he not be named, said in court.
“Thanks to your disgraceful thuggery my friends and I had our lives changed.”
A career soldier, he said the incident had caused him to revert to his training and plan an exit strategy for every room he entered.
“It was butchery, and you’re all old enough to recognise right from wrong,” he said. “Given our ages range from 45 to 74, consider this: would you have done this to your father or grandfather?”
McKechnie lacked the courage to apologise to her victims. Her lawyer did so on her behalf, insisting the young woman was “extremely sorry and remorseful” and had acted “completely out of character”.
Rochester’s lawyer spoke of his client’s remorse, saying the young man “knew what he did was wrong”.
Unlike his peers, Dix found fortitude enough to read an apology in court.
“This incident was the worst day of my life and would have been for many others, especially the victims,” he said, showing a gift for understatement.
“I wish that I had acted differently. I can say that I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering I have inflicted on you and your family.”
In November last year, Judge Paul Slattery suspended McKechnie and Dix’s jail terms, ordering they perform 150 hours and 200 hours of community service respectively.
“You were severely intoxicated,” he said. “It may be said there erupted a maelstrom of violence, shouting and screaming … and it descended into chaos. There is nothing I can do here today to restore these men,” he continued, indicating the victims.
“It’s just one of the tragedies that have occurred as a result of these events.”
In January this year, Judge Slattery suspended Rochester’s jail term on condition of a three-year bond with 150 hours of community service.
“It was sickening to watch the CCTV footage of the assault and hear Mr Richardson hit the ground,” he said. “Your actions were cowardly and, in these circumstances, utterly inexplicable.”
For the victims, their tormentors’ state of mind was the real mystery.
“It’s difficult to know if they’re sorry,” Mr Ettridge said outside court. “I just think community service was a good deterrent and I didn’t want to see any of them get jailed, they are only young. At the end of the day it might deter them from doing it to somebody else. I don’t think they will reoffend.”
Mr Richardson was less forgiving.
“I’m bitterly disappointed,” he said. “How in the hell is a sentence like that going to frighten anybody off this type of thing? It is part of the youth culture, unfortunately. They’re blaming ‘he was drunk’ or drugs, or a tough upbringing.
“Hey, I had a tough upbringing too and so have millions of other people — it doesn’t mean you go out and clobber somebody. I don’t believe this is teaching them anything.”
He may well have been right. Within hours of his sentencing, Rochester expressed his delight on Facebook. “I GOT A SUSPENDED SENTENCE!!” he wrote. “I had an angel watching over my back big time, and I will never be dealt another hand like this again. No more. I’M FREEEEEEEE. THANK YOU GOD.”
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As summer moves towards autumn what can locals expect tomorrow? We have the latest word from the Weather Bureau.