Heartbroken mother reveals Apex gang’s attack on her son led to his tragic death

EXCLUSIVE: THE devastated mother of a Melbourne carjacking victim who later took his own life due to the trauma has blamed youth gang Apex for his death.

The death of Mr Newman was the second linked to a chain of crimes.

THE HEARTBROKEN mother of a carjacking victim who later took his own life due to the trauma has blamed youth gang Apex for his death.

Denise Scott said son Sam took his own life last month after he was robbed by suspected Apex gang member Issac Gatkuoth.

Now she wants to make sure the teen who pointed a shotgun at her son’s head is banished from Australia after the Federal Government cancelled his visa.

Gatkuoth, now aged 19, and an accomplice followed Mr Newman from a nightclub before pouncing outside the family home in Frankston South in November, 2015.

Mrs Scott said the violence of Apex and other youth crime gangs was having a deeply destructive impact for many people.

“I just want these boys to realise what they’re doing to other people,” she said.

“It’s got to stop. I don’t want anyone else to be pushed over the edge. Our case is tragic but there are lot of other people who are being traumatised.”

“How would they feel if it was someone from their family. That’d be a different story.”

The death of Mr Newman was the second linked to a chain of crimes involving Gatkouth and others.

Amanda Matheson was killed in head on collision with the stolen BMW. Picture Supplied

The stolen BMW he used was later passed on to a 15-year-old suspected Apex member who, while travelling on the wrong side of the road, killed mother-of-two Amanda Matheson three days later at Mordialloc.

Gatkuoth, who is serving 20 months in detention, was high on ice and had not slept for two weeks before the carjacking.

A court later heard he had a horrific childhood and had only just heard his father, who he thought was alive, had actually died when he was two.

His two brothers were killed in conflict in Sudan, which also wiped out his entire village.

Mrs Scott said she appreciated Gatkuoth — who is appealing the deportation decision — had a terrible upbringing, but he had damaged the very community which had reached out to help him.

“He abused it in every sense of the word.”

“What sort of person are you to come from a war-torn country and do this”.

Isaac Gatkuoth. Picture: Facebook

Mrs Scott said the teen thugs behind carjackings, home invasions and armed robberies in Melbourne were not being punished severely enough.

She said the devastation being wrought by youth offenders of all backgrounds could not be underestimated.

“I feel sorry for the police. They’re fighting a losing battle. They feel like they’re losing control,” she said.

Detective Senior-Constable Paul Roberts, who received a force commendation for his investigation of the carjacking, said the voices of victims needed to be heard more strongly.

“We meet such wonderful people whose lives are destroyed by mindless, irresponsible predators.” he said.

“I just wish the judges could truly feel the sickening heartache and anguish I saw from Amanda Matheson’s and Sam Newman’s families, instead of merely reading it in a victim impact statement.”

Sen-Const. Roberts said, too often, perpetrators said what the justice system wanted to hear before repeating their crimes.

“I understand the concept behind rehabilitation but there are some individuals that are beyond rehabilitation and all they do is provide false lip service to reduce their sentence,” he said.

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DENISE Scott can barely find the words to express the grief of the past month.

How could she explain the feeling of finding her own son — dead by his own hand — in the family backyard?

Sam Newman was the young man she was so proud of, loved so much that he was to walk her down the aisle when she remarried in May this year.

How could she explain what it’s like to clear all the possessions from his room and put them in boxes because she can’t bear to look at them any more?

“We don’t know how to live without him,” Mrs Scott said.

“I still expect him to walk through the door. The full impact of this is incredible. Sam was going to be the one walking me down the aisle.”

This was a tragedy which slowly unfolded for 14 months, from the early hours of November 6, 2015.

“We don’t know how to live without him.”

Sam was in his Falcon XR6 with best mate Daniel Sibberas when they were followed home from a nightclub by teenager Issac Gatkuoth and an accomplice, travelling in a stolen BMW.

Sam and Daniel knew they were being tailed before the Ford was bumped by the BMW and Gatkuoth — a bandana across his face — climbed out brandishing a shotgun.

He levelled it at the head of Sam, who was robbed of everything from the vehicle to his shoes.

“Sam didn’t argue with them,” Mrs Scott said.

“He came running through the house screaming and said, `I’ve been held-up at gunpoint. I’ve been carjacked.”

What followed was an ordeal Sam silently endured but would never fully shrug off.

Specialist armed robbery police knew he had post-traumatic stress disorder and tried to persuade him to attend the counselling he needed.

Detective Senior Constable Paul Roberts of the Frankston Embona taskforce had suffered PTSD and was certain of what he was seeing.

“I knew that Sam was suffering from PTSD within days,” Sen-Const. Paul Roberts said.

“That poor young man had a shotgun shoved in his face and he thought he was going to die.

“You just can’t comprehend how that messes with your body chemistry, to your emotional state of mind.

”I knew that Sam was suffering from PTSD within days.”

“Here’s a kid doing the right thing, just going home, and these guys come along like pack animals, like predators.”

Although he went on living an apparently normal life, there were panic attacks, sleeplessness and an increasing urge to shut himself off.

“We all tried but he wouldn’t have it. He said, `Mum, I’ll talk to you if I need to’. But he wouldn’t,” Mrs Scott said.

In the hours before his death -, when she found him playing darts on the patio alone at 2am — Sam’s worried mother tried for the final time.

“I said to him, `you told me that if you won’t see a counsellor, you’d talk to me’,” she recalls saying.

Sam had gone through a long recovery from major injuries suffered in a 2014 road smash but Mrs Scott is certain the carjacking was the turning point.

“He was doing okay until the carjacking. That just screwed him up big-time. He had so much to live for.”

Mrs Scott wants Melbourne’s new breed of teenage wannabe gangsters to know they aren’t committing crimes in some video game world where there are no tangible consequences.

She said the shockwaves travelled way beyond her pain, from immediate family to the police who attended the morning of Sam’s death.

“He was doing okay until the carjacking. That just screwed him up big-time.”

Sam’s seven-year-old sister still thinks her brother’s assailants came back and killed him last month.

She won’t use her backyard cubby house anymore.

His stepbrother, 16, had lived with Sam for only two years but they had forged a strong bond which has been destroyed.

Daniel Sibberas’ mother Shelley said the pair were inseparable and his sense of loss was best summed up by a Facebook post made the day after Sam’s death.

“I’m just a little boy that’s lost and doesn’t know his way,” Daniel wrote.

Then there are people like Mrs Scott’s close friend Tracey Hunter, who was in the delivery room the day Sam was born and again for the heartbreak of January 5.

“I was there the day he came into the world,” she said.

“All I got to do was give him a kiss on the forehead as he was wheeled out.”

While her family’s case is extreme, Mrs Scott said there were stories of trauma all over Melbourne generated by the wave of youth carjackings, home invasions and armed robberies.

“If you can’t feel safe in your own home, what’s going on? I just want people to stop being hurt,” she said.

Newman with his dog, Bella.

Mrs Scott said her boy’s gentle, selfless nature was a direct contrast to Gatkuoth and his ilk.

On a trip to the United States as an eight-year-old, he gave cash to homeless man and was handed a coin in return.

“He cherished that. He turned it into a necklace,” Mrs Scott said.

“He was the most caring and loving person who went out of his way for anyone.”

Shelley Sibberas recalls asking Sam how he was in the hours after the carjacking, but his only concern was for the heart condition his mate lives with.

“He said, `don’t worry about me. Get Daniel checked’.”

Mrs Sibberas is saddened and furious about what happened to Sam and what her son has gone through.

“A lot of these kids are 18. Why are we putting them in juvenile justice centres? If they want to do big boy crimes, put them in a big boy jail.”

Mrs Sibberas said Daniel sat through a four-hour “mediation” session with Gatkuoth’s accomplice but she has been told he has since been charged with other criminal offences.

“These two boys they picked on would do anything for their community.” Mrs Sibberas said.

“They used to say they were brothers from a different mother. I could not ever have met a nicer kid.”

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