Pair admit shooting policeman in head after firing at home belonging to father of murdered drug kingpin
TWO men who pleaded guilty to shooting a police officer in the face following a “crime rampage” aimed at the family of dead drug lord Carl Williams, didn’t mean to hurt him, prosecutors have accepted.
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TWO men who pleaded guilty to shooting a police officer in the face following a “crime rampage” aimed at the family of dead drug lord Carl Williams didn’t mean to hurt him, prosecutors have accepted.
Rodney Phillips, 25, of Oak Park, and Sam Liszczak, 23, of Morwell were both scheduled to face trial today over the attempted murder of Constable Ben Ashmole.
Instead, the pair pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of recklessly causing injury to the officer and reckless conduct endangering Constable Ashmole and his partner’s life.
They also pleaded guilty to criminal damage, arson, and firearm possession.
The men originally denied any wrong doing during a pre-trial committal hearing last June over the July 2015 rampage.
During that hearing, Mr Phillips yawned after entering his not guilty plea.
The men were accused of embarking on a bungled firebombing attack aimed at the Williams clan days before shooting the officer.
The Melbourne Magistrates’ Court heard the men bombed the neighbours of Williams’s now deceased dad George before a similar bungled effort on the street of his ex-wife Roberta.
Police said the men finally found their mark on July 7, when George Williams’s Broadmeadows house was blasted with a shotgun.
But police were waiting when the men arrived outside the home of Roberta Williams, chasing their stolen 4WD to a primary school in Moonee Ponds.
Constable Ashmole was shot in the face at point blank range after he and his partner Constable Tom Wospil cornered the suspects in the school carpark.
Constable Ashmole, who was driving, required two operations to his head after pellets from the shotgun blast lodged into his skull.
The court heard the officer believed their car was about to be rammed when he flinched his head and heard a bang.
“It’s almost impossible to pinpoint what I experienced and at what point. It happened so quickly,” he said.
But Constable Wospil said he believed the car decelerated or stopped when the shot was fired.
Prosecutor Neil Hutton said the allegation left it open for a jury to find both the driver and the shooter acted together in attempting to kill the officer.
“The only thing that was going to stop these people … was the driver of the police car to be shot a killed,” he said. “The driver knew the passenger was going to shoot and kill the police officer.”
The men were arrested two weeks later in co-ordinated raids across Victoria.
Phillips and Liszczak will return to court for a plea hearing on February 15.
