Child attackers who stabbed and choked a girl and left her for dead sentenced

A judge has called a crime from a group of teenagers “a chilling example of human conduct,” as he sentenced them all to jail time.

A crying mother shook her head furiously after hearing two teenagers who “chillingly” stabbed her once carefree 16-year-old daughter and left her to die in a burning house, could be released from prison in less than two years.

“It was a callous crime. To stab, choke and immobilise someone and leave them to be ravaged by a fire. It‘s a chilling example of human conduct,” District Court Judge Sean Grant told the Albury Court House on Tuesday.

He slammed the actions of the pair who were 16 and 17 when they viciously assaulted a girl at her Albury home in November, 2019, but conceded they were children at the time and would be dealt with as such.

The pair who are now 18 and 19, faced a maximum 25 years on both charges after pleading guilty to causing grievous bodily harm with attempt to murder and destroying property with the intent to endanger life.

A picture of EW who was sentenced after attempting to murder a 16-year-old girl.

The men, referred to as DC and EW, were sentenced to an aggregate sentence of seven years, and could be released on parole as early as May, 2023.

Wearing dress shirts with tidy brown hair, DC and EW politely listened to the judge from separate juvenile detention centre hearing rooms - a far cry from the teenagers chillingly described in the facts as carrying out a “callous crime“ with “no apparent motive”.

Judge Grant told the court: “The attack would have been terrifying for the victim.”

The girl was left with three stab wounds to her abdomen, neck and temple, undergoing surgery for a perforated liver, the court heard.

The court heard DC, who was homeless for six weeks prior to the stabbing, was “best friends” with the girl.

DC chose to leave home, to see whether he could survive without his “supportive” parents and prove he was no longer a “little kid”, the court heard.

He arrived at her Swan St home in the early hours of Monday morning with EW, who the girl had never met before, and was let in to stay the night by the girl’s mother.

In the morning, when the mum left to go to work, the three teenagers smoked some cannabis.

The girl left the room to find a lighter and was stabbed with a knife and choked on her return, the court heard. She stopped struggling and played dead, then passed out.

The court heard the boys stole some PlayStation games then set the house on fire, leaving the girl unconscious, bleeding out and engulfed in smoke. She was saved by neighbours who noticed the fire.

DC was remorseful, telling prison officers he was “so ashamed” of his “horrific” behaviour.

“Everybody wants to know why this happened and honestly I‘ve been asking myself for 20 months. I truly just don’t know,” he said.

He used cannabis, which he said “fried his brain”, causing him to lose his sense of reality.

EW had a harder time growing up, suffering abuse at the hands of his dad and being diagnosed with autism at 10-years-old and later diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Both were sentenced under special circumstances, with the judge taking into account the effects of Covid-19 on prisons and that it was their first offence.

Judge Grant told the court “no sentence I impose can ever restore the victim to the time before….I hope this proceeding does in some way bring some kind of resolution for her”.

The mother of the girl shook her head as the boys were sentenced, seemingly unsatisfied with the outcome.