Donna Lee McAvoy, found guilty of the murder of Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding, sentenced to life in prison
THE sister of slain Gold Coast detective Damian Leeding has mocked his killers in court as the female killer is sentenced to life in prison.
Crime and Court
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COP killer Donna Lee McAvoy has been sentenced to life in prison with a non parole period of 15 years for murdering Gold Coast detective Damian Leeding.
Accomplice Benjamin Ernest Power has been sentenced to nine years prison for manslaughter. He has been declared a serious violent offender.
EARLIER: The sister of slain Gold Coast detective Damian Leeding has mocked his killers in court for their roles in the crime.
In a victim impact statement, a furious Hayley Sinton told Donna Lee McAvoy and Benjamin Ernest Power her grief had turned to anger since the killers’ trial last September.
She glared at the pair as they sat in the dock and loudly told them their actions had changed her family’s life forever.
“I can’t for the life of me understand why none of you stopped to aid a dying man,” she said from the witness box before a packed court.
“Where is your moral compass? Where is your basic human compassion for another person?”
Ms Sinton vowed to do whatever she could to make sure the pair stayed locked up forever.
She said she was looking forward to finally taking a much-needed holiday, “sipping cocktails” and watching her children play at the beach.
“You will be in jail. I hope it’s as lonely and as miserable as that plainly sounds,” she told McAvoy, 40, and Power, 39, in the Supreme Court in Brisbane on Friday.
Detective Senior Constable Leeding’s mother Julie Waters condemned the “cowardly” killers who had shown “no remorse”.
“I do not know how anyone could walk past ... a fatally wounded man and leave him to die,” she said during her victim impact statement.
The 35-year-old police officer was shot in the head while trying to stop an armed robbery at the Pacific Pines Tavern in May 2011.
Gunman Phillip Graeme Abell, 41, and accomplice McAvoy were found guilty of murdering the father-of-two last September.
Getaway driver Power pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Abell was sentenced in October to life imprisonment with no parole for at least 20 years.
The sentencing hearing continues.
EARLIER: Two people involved in the shooting of Gold Coast policeman Damian Leeding are due to be sentenced today.
Detective Senior Constable Leeding was fatally shot in the head when called out to respond to an armed robbery at the Pacific Pines Tavern in May, 2011.
The man who shot him, Phillip Abell, was last year sentenced to life for murder following a trial.
Co-accused Donna Lee McAvoy was also found guilty of murder after trial and will this morning be sentenced in the Supreme Court in Brisbane on a number of charges the killing, deprivation of liberty and robbery with violence.
Getaway driver Benjamin Ernest Power is also listed for sentence today on manslaughter and related armed robbery charges.
The mother of Det Snr-Cnst Leeding told the court his killers were “not fit for society”.
His sister also read a victim impact statement, saying she would follow the case for decades and fight any parole applications in the future.
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