Where Bourke St killer’s destructive path began
Dimitrious Gargasoulas’ destructive path was set long before he made his sharp left turn into Bourke St. It began almost a decade earlier, on the wide open back roads of Stuart Highway mining town Coober Pedy.
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Dimitrious Gargasoulas’ destructive path was set long before he made his sharp left turn into Bourke St.
It began almost a decade earlier, on the wide open back roads of Coober Pedy, the Stuart Highway mining town where the teenager scuffed his feet in the dirt and his father chipped at the earth and dreamt big.
Dressed in a neat white shirt for his sentencing in the Supreme Court on Friday, the mass murderer barely shifted in his seat as a judge detailed how a litany of violence, drug abuse and mental instability created the framework for a single act of terror that changed the lives of hundreds of Australians.
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But Justice Mark Weinberg said it was no excuse.
It took only a minute or two for him to cut through the lunchtime crowds behind the wheel of the maroon Commodore in January 2017.
Amid the blur of bodies flying past his windscreen, Gargasoulas ignored pleas to stop and failed to take his foot off the accelerator.
But to the dozens gathered inside courtroom one, it was, perhaps, apparent that this single course of conduct had been a long time coming.
At just 14, they heard how Gargasoulas had been expelled from school after he used explosives from his father’s shed to construct a crude bomb.
He went on to earn local notoriety as a small-time drug dealer with a big mouth.
He worked briefly by his father’s side and sometimes tinkered at vehicle engines but by the time he moved to Melbourne to live with his mother he’d never held down a regular job.
By then he was already hooked on ice — increasingly hypnotised by the swirling white smoke within a glass pipe and all the moral decay that came with it.
But the first signs of mental instability were not apparent until he returned to Melbourne for a second time after a brief stint back home in 2016. He started telling people he possessed the “God gene” and became paranoid that family members were trying to kill him.
He spoke increasingly of a secret global illuminati and accused his sister of working for the government.
Three months before his reign of terror in the city, the father of four repeatedly punched his pregnant partner. In later, unrelated incidents, he drove into traffic to evade police and spoke of comets destroying the earth on social media.
Two days before the attack, Gargasoulas phoned the chambers of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, spluttering through the receiver about government conspiracies and religion.
Then he entered a church on Lonsdale St and told those present he was filled with the Spirit of God, accusing the priest of being the devil.
There was yet more evidence of a life derailed — reckless conduct, theft, offensive behaviour, assault and criminal damage.
But in so many words, Justice Weinberg said that, beyond the violent behaviour and his plagued mind, Gargasoulas still retained the ability to make choices.
His criminal curriculum vitae was no excuse for what would be his final violent act.
“You committed these past offences at a time when there was no suggestion that you were suffering from delusions, psychosis, or any mental condition that could be regarded as mitigating,” Justice Weinberg said. “You were simply a low-level criminal, willing, on occasion, to act violently.”
Of his unhinged last day in the city, Justice Weinberg said there was no excuse.
“Your actions were both callous and cowardly,” he said.
“Even making allowance for your disordered state of mind, you seem to have been concerned, primarily, with evading police, no matter at what cost.
“You have shown no genuine remorse, and I do not accept that you have displayed any true empathy for those whose lives you have shattered or destroyed.”
Gargasoulas said nothing as he was led from the dock. Nor was there a whimper from anybody in the public gallery. Outside, there was talk of the contentious non-parole period.
This killer, they argued, could be released in his 70s.
Some felt this judge should have thrown away the key.