Baroch Baroch, Mawut Ater jailed for Truganina assault

A violent Bonnie and Clyde couple who bashed a good Samaritan in Melbourne’s west after he tried to help when they crashed their stolen car has made a call for leniency.

Baroch Baroch, 26, and Mawut Ater, 24, brutally bashed a man who stopped to help them following a car accident in Truganina, the County Court heard.

A drugged-up crime couple who brutally bashed a man when he stopped to help after they crashed their stolen car have been jailed.

Baroch Baroch, 26, was driving erratically in Truganina while behind the wheel of a stolen silver Volkswagen Golf on July 25 last year when he ran off the road and into an embankment, the County Court heard on November 16.

Another motorist who had been following close behind Baroch witnessed the incident and stopped to render assistance believing Baroch and his passenger Mawut Ater had been hurt.

But the couple, instead of thanking him for his help, got out of the car and viciously attacked the good Samaritan, leaving him lying unconscious and with a fractured eye socket in the middle of the road, Judge Martine Marich told the court.

They then stole the man’s car as witnesses from a nearby home called police and an ambulance.

“The two of you approached (him) and immediately started punching him, where by he fell to the ground and you continued to assault (him) by kicking and stomping him on the head,” Judge Marich told the court.

Since the attack, the man told the court in a victim impact statement he no longer felt safe and had trouble sleeping.

He said he was also reluctant to stop at the scene of future accidents in case the same thing happened again.

“He’s told me the incident has made him feel unsafe and he’s constantly looking over his back,” Judge Marich told the court.

“It’s been an extremely painful, traumatic and distressing event for him.”

The court heard Baroch and Ater were in the middle of a crime spree at the time of the offence and both were heavy users of the drug ice.

Baroch had days earlier held a knife to a man’s throat and robbed him during a drug deal gone awry after meeting his victim at the Kealba Hotel.

Ater had also tried to steal a woman’s handbag while visiting the same hotel, and was involved in a carjacking near Sunshine days after the Truganina incident with a group of friends.

Judge Marich said both Baroch and Ater, 24, came from troubled backgrounds.

Both had fled war-torn countries and were exposed to trauma and violence before arriving in Australia with their families in 2005.

But she said she needed to weigh the mitigatory effects of this with her responsibility to protect the community from their aggressive behaviour.

Baroch pleaded guilty to charges of intentionally cause injury, theft, commit an indictable offence on bail, dealing with the proceeds of crime and weapon possession.

Ater pleaded guilty to robbery, theft, intentionally cause injury, obtain property by deception, carjacking and handling stolen goods.

Baroch was sentenced to six years’ and six months’ jail with a non-parole period of four years and three months.

Ater, a mother of two young children, was sentenced to six years’ jail with a minimum of four years.

The court heard the couple have since broken up.