Canterbury IED case: mum hit with bomb at Canterbury reveals escape

A Sydney mum has stared down her alleged attackers while revealing the “instinct” that saved her from near-certain death when young men let off a bomb on her front veranda.

It was the horrifying moment Hollywood gangland violence shattered a quiet Sydney street with a home made bomb and a towering fireball.

Now the innocent mother caught in the horror has stared down her attackers and revealed the “instinct” that saved her life.

Denise Lavell was at home in Canterbury, in the city’s inner west, when she noticed a flickering light through her stained glass windows in June 2020.

She rushed out and, in her confusion, thought some laundry on her front veranda had caught fire and threw a blanket over the small blaze.

“Unbeknown to me it was fuelled by aerosols so the blanket caught fire,” she told Downing Centre District Court on Friday.

“I’m forever grateful my instincts made me kick the increasing fire off the enclosed veranda. I believe that reflex saved me from devastating injuries or even death.”

A second later the crude bomb exploded once, and then a second time, with the fire lighting the night sky.

Accused Antonio Capo.

Accused Zhane Thompson.

Flaming shrapnel whizzed across the Canterbury neighbourhood but luckily just one piece hit Ms Lavell.

The wounded mum was, at most, two metres from the blast and every piece of exposed skin was horribly burned, the court heard.

She ran screaming into the yard until her neighbour rushed to hose her burning skin and the flaming bomb.

Four or five shadowy figures would later be seen on CCTV leaving the explosive at the front of her home.

Ms Lavell said she was devastated when NSW Police detectives unpicked their motive.

The group of young men were out for blood after one of their own was mugged and drugs were involved, the court heard.

Wannabe drug dealer Nicholas Sguras, 20, had enlisted a small crew of young men including Antonio Capo and Zhane Thompson and Patrick Anh to “seek vengeance” for the bashing.

They mistakenly zeroed in on the Lavell household and what followed was “a very bad night out”, as Thompson’s lawyer Bob Webb put it on Friday.

A street camera captures one of the explosions which burned Ms Lavell.

“Plan A” involved the group arming themselves with baseball bats and waiting in a car outside the Lavell household to ambush the person they mistakenly believed had wronged them.

When they couldn’t find their target, one of the crew, Moses Succar, assembled “plan B” — the bomb — which he packed with thumbtacks.

Grainy CCTV showed the bomb exploding just before 11pm.

“Had I been caught on the enclosed veranda in that explosion I don’t think I would be here to tell the tale ... I can’t believe this horrific event happened in my ordinary life in my quiet little suburb,” Ms Lavell told the court.

“This is the sort of stuff you see in American gangland movies.”

Ms Lavell recounted the horrors of her burns and the cruel months that followed spent in the burns unit.

She could not even walk, her ankles were so badly burned, but the emotional trauma was worse, she told the court.

Ms Lavell lauded the NSW Police detectives who worked the case and tracked down the people who could have killed her.

The court heard it was not clear whether all the bombers knew the device would be placed on the veranda, as Capo once claimed, or whether it was just going to be “a firecracker” set off “in the street”.

A street camera captures one of the explosions which burned Ms Lavell.

Succar’s lawyer argued the bomb maker was just “along for the ride” and the “devastating and immature” bomb was only planted when the target couldn’t be attacked with bats — so premeditation was limited.

“The thumbtacks, it’s outrageous,” Judge Richard Weinstein SC said, shaking his head.

Capo and Thompson are charged with being armed to commit an indictable offence and possess explosives to cause injury.

Sguras is charged with participating in a criminal group, drug supply, burning and maiming with exploding gunpowder and being armed to commit an indictable offence.

Succar is charged with burning or maiming by gunpowder as is Ahn, who is also charged with refusing to reveal his identity while a passenger.

The crew will be sentenced in March.