Frankston meat cleaver attack: party boy tweaker Patrick Hopkins jailed for frenzied, bloody assault
A former Catholic schoolboy has told a court his vicious ice-fuelled armed attack on a mate after a fallout at a Keysborough pub was “out of character”. But the judge disagreed and slapped him with a harsh sentence.
South East
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A drug-fuelled party boy who hacked his mate’s arm with a meat cleaver has been jailed.
Former St James College Bentleigh East schoolboy Patrick Hopkins’ “disagreement” with Jake Fleskens started at the Keysborough Hotel days before the March 3 attack.
The pair swapped angry phone calls and heated messages via Facebook before Hopkins decided to escalate the dispute in person.
Hopkins went to the Frankston apartment of Mr Flesken’s girlfriend, Luka Schoeman, shortly after midnight.
Mr Fleskens went downstairs to the car park armed with a knife and a broken piece of handrail to confront Hopkins.
Hopkins charged at Mr Fleskens and hacked at him with the cleaver.
Badly injured with his arm half hanging off, Mr Fleskens asked a woman in a car for help but she drove away and phoned police.
Mr Fleskens went back to the apartment and Hopkins asked if he could come in to clean up because the “police were coming”.
When police arrived in the car park, the blood trail led them to the elevator and then to the apartment where Mr Fleskens was sitting on the couch with a shirt wrapped around his arm.
Police also found the blood-soaked cleaver in the apartment.
Mr Fleskens initially refused treatment but was later taken to hospital with an 8cm laceration through the muscle of his forearm, completely severing his forearm muscles and nerves and injuring the bone.
He needed emergency surgery and plastic surgery.
Hopkins was arrested by police as he left the apartment block.
He told police the cut on his face came after he “fell over” and denied knowing Mr Fleskens, being at the apartment or possessing a meat cleaver.
He also denied doing drugs, telling police he only drank four vodka Cruisers.
However he confessed after CCTV footage contradicted his story.
Hopkins, 29, was sentenced in the County Court on October 18 to a minimum of two years in jail after pleading guilty to recklessly causing serious injury and burglary.
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The court heard Hopkins worked in the building industry after he left St James in Year 10.
He started using ecstasy when he was 15 and regularly used party drugs from age 18 and developed an ice addiction in his 20s.
His lawyer submitted the incident was “a mutual confrontation of sorts” and his “out-of-character” offending was in the low range, but Judge Susan Pullen disagreed.
She said the offending was closer to “mid-range” but he had “good prospects” of rehabilitation if he stayed off the drugs.
“I remain concerned about the need to protect the community from you until such time as you become abstinent,” she said.
Hopkins was sentenced to a maximum three years’ prison with a non-parole period of 24 months.
He had spent 229 days in custody at the time of sentencing.