Mildura criminals who faced court in 2021 for serious offences

From a Mildura rapist who committed a "brutal and demeaning” attack to a father who beat his toddler, these are the criminals punished in 2021.

From a rapist who committed a "brutal and demeaning” attack to a father who beat his child so severely she will never be the same again, these are some of the more serious criminals who fronted Mildura’s court in 2021.

While Crime Statistics Agency data revealed Mildura’s overall criminal activity mostly decreased in 2021 compared to the previous year, the region’s figures show family violence increased by 7.3 per cent.

One offender who cannot be named was sentenced to five years jail after he viciously beat his two-year-old daughter so severely she was left with brain damage.

These are the more serious cases heard in court during 2021.

Kahn Meyers

Mildura man Kahn Meyers, 20, set his mate on fire on Tenth St over getting the wrong petrol

The victim had to take himself to hospital, where he was put in an induced coma.

Kahn Meyers pleaded guilty in the County Court to recklessly causing serious injury.

The court heard Meyers had given the friend $7 to buy petrol for his lawnmower but returned with petrol for a two-stroke engine. This is when Meyers said he would light his mate on fire.

Meyers continued to douse the petrol on his mate’s crotch and lower jumper before being interrupted by someone arriving at the property.

Meyers then attempted to light the petrol but it had dried so he poured on more and then used a lighter to ignite the petrol on his victim’s crotch.

The victim was said to have burst into flames so high they rose above his head.

Later being transferred to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne as he had burns to about 20.5 per cent of his body.

Meyers was convicted and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison, with a non-parole period of two years and three months.

Former secondary school aide

The award-winning former Mildura-based secondary school aide, who assisted migrant and refugee children, raped a girl multiple times for his own “sexual gratification”.

He was sentenced in the County Court to a minimum eight-year jail term after he was found guilty of eight charges of rape.

He raped his victim various times over several months while he worked as an aide at a regional high school. He raped the victim in front of his wife while his wife was drunk and almost passed out.

The victim said the man “threatened” her and she was warned “not to tell anyone” but she later told a school principal and the matter was referred to police.

The man was jailed for a maximum 12 years and made a registered sex offender for life.

Thanh Nguyen

Thanh Nguyen, 44, helped turn a strip of vacant shops into a major cannabis operation. But if it wasn’t for eagle-eyed locals it might have gone unnoticed.

Nguyen was a member of a Vietnamese drug trafficking network by Operation Sea-Eagle, a Drug Task Force investigation into the network which operated between October 2015 and May 2016.

Police swooped on the shops after locals noticed carpet and lino removed from the floors and reported loud noises such as hammering and drilling coming from the shops day and night.

Police raided the shops on March 22, 2016, finding a large hydroponics set up and more than 100 cannabis plants.

He was sentenced to 86 days served as pre-sentence detention and had a two year corrections order imposed.

Kaylen Pappin

CCTV footage shows Pappin assaulting his victim with a kukri. (Image: Supplied by Court)

A gang of thugs horrifically bashed a teen riding his scooter in Mildura with baseball bats and a machete before stomping on his head and fleeing.

Kaylen Pappin, 19, a member of a Mildura gang, pleaded guilty to charges of carjacking, aggravated burglary, assault and possession of a controlled weapon.

Pappin and three others chased down and attacked an 18-year-old victim who was riding his scooter on August 12 2021.

The teen tried to hide in the front yard of a nearby house but Pappin and his accomplices, who had been chasing him in a black SUV, got out of their car armed with knives and baseball bats and beat him.

Pappin threatened the victim with a 50cm machete knife before all four bashed the victim with their weapons.

He was sentenced to a total of four months in youth detention, having assessed him as highly vulnerable in adult custody.

Brenton Healey

A Mildura sex fiend, Brenton Healey, 34, surrendered to police after two teenage girls, who he’d been supplying with drugs in return for sex acts, turned on him and bashed him with weapons.

Healey supplied a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old girl with meth, cocaine, MDMA and cannabis then pushed them to perform sex acts with him for months.

One night he took them both to his house and smoked cannabis with them before he twice tried to put his hand in the 15-year-old’s pants and she pushed him away and asked to go home.

He continued to spend nights with the girls, and one night, after they had all smoked meth, sexually touched both girls, also penetrating the 15-year-old.

Healey taught the girls how to smoke cocaine and “would always want something in return for the drugs”, the court heard.

He once told the 17-year-old he wouldn’t drive her home unless she performed a sex act on him.

Healey took the 15-year-old with him to buy prescription medication from his drug dealer one night, then drove her around as she vomited and reacted to the medication.

The court heard she wet herself and was unable to push Healey off while under the influence of the drug.

She then resisted his demands for sex as he sexually assaulted her in his back seat.

He was sentenced to a maximum of nine years’ and six months’ jail.

Sofia Mammone

Supplied Editorial Mildura woman Sofia Mammone

A convicted Mildura drug trafficker lasted just three weeks out of jail before being caught by police doing the same thing.

Sofia Mammone, 29, pleaded guilty to charges of trafficking and possessing methylamphetamine – just three weeks after she left custody.

Police intercepted a car leaving Mammone’s address, a small plastic zip lock bag with a thin red line containing methylamphetamine was found in the driver’s shirt pocket. The driver said she had got the drug from the lady in the house.

A search was conducted of the property and more drugs were found.

Mammone was sentenced to 37 days in prison, which included punishment for breaching her community corrections order.

Cameron O’Brien

Cameron Obrien (right) pleaded guilty to sex offences. Facebook.

A serial Mildura sex pest, Cameron O’Brien, 29, who was out on bail for a sexual assault when he violated a child was made a registered sex offender for life and jailed for a maximum five years and three months.

O’Brien was arrested and remanded shortly after assaulting his first victim in mid-2019, the court was told.

However, O’Brien was bailed and on the streets when he sexually penetrated his child victim more than 12 months later.

Police also caught O’Brien with meth after he was arrested for multiple breaches of failing to comply with reporting conditions.

In her victim impact statement, the child victim said O‘Brien left her “struggling to cope”.

“I was in shock, I didn‘t know what to do,” she said.

Yarrun Morgan

Yarrun Morgan, 24, committed a “brutal, demeaning” rape and assault on a stranger as she left the pub was sentenced to at least five years in jail.

The court heard that in June of 2019 Morgan had been awake for days, bingeing on methamphetamine and alcohol, when he approached his victim in the early hours of the morning on a bridge over the Murray River.

Morgan grabbed the unsuspecting woman in a “bear hug” from behind and put his hand down her pants.

He then punched her in the face, breaking her eye socket and knocking her over a guard rail onto the river bank.

The woman came-to and lay in silence fearing Morgan might have been looking for her, before ringing her friends and police for help.

Her eye socket required a bone graft, and told the court last year she still feels intense fear of being outside at night alone.

Robinvale dad

A Robinvale father who viciously beat his two-year-old daughter so severely she was left with brain damage was sentenced to at least five years in jail.

The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to charges of recklessly causing injury, possessing methamphetamine and cannabis in Mildura’s County Court in early 2021 was handed a seven year jail sentence with a five year non-parole period.

The court heard his daughter, whose identity is also suppressed, will require lifelong care following the brutal attack.

The court heard the man was using methamphetamine and cannabis while caring for his daughter and the child would stay in another room while he was coming off drugs.

The man messaged his partner, telling her his daughter was: “Not like me, she is stupid dumb, not like (my) kids … it‘s dead weight like she is a kid from the down the road.”

On another day a relative walked into the man’s bedroom and saw the child lying on the bed screaming while the father sat at the edge of the bed.

The child was lying on her back with her hands clenched to her chest, “stiff as a board with her mouth open and tongue going in and out. Her eyes were half open with only the white part of her eyes visible”.

After time served, the man will be eligible for parole in 2025.