Melbourne’s public transport criminals
Victorians are more fearful about catching public transport at night than any other state. These are some of the crimes committed on our network.
Police & Courts
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Victorians are more concerned about catching public transport at night than any other state.
The Productivity Commission’s annual report revealed 26 per cent of travellers said they felt unsafe on trains, trams and buses after dark.
From thugs attacking unsuspecting passengers with shovels to perverts performing disturbing sex acts and drug dealing bikie associates, these are some of the crimes committed on Melbourne’s public transport network.
MUHAMMAD “BILAL” KHAN
A public masturbator who ejaculated on women at community festivals in broad daylight as children were running about avoided jail.
Muhammad “Bilal” Khan, 40, performed disturbing sex acts on three women amid a three-year spree, as they were going about their daily business travelling on trams and listening to music at community events.
The high-flyer, who had been sacked from his $120k job at insurance broker AB Phillips, was only caught after his DNA was taken when he was arrested for grabbing a woman’s buttocks as she ordered drinks at the Carlton Club.
In October 2019, Khan was caught on CCTV repeatedly grabbing a woman’s buttocks and dragging his finger up her leg as she stood at the bar.
The DNA linked him to an assault at a Brunswick music festival, a lewd act on a woman catching a tram to the Royal Melbourne Hospital in February 2017, and on a woman watching stage music at the St Kilda Festival in February 2015.
Khan was convicted and ordered to do 250 hours of community work and treatment programs over two years.
BRANDON LEGA-FROST
A vicious thug who smashed a stranger in the face with a shovel had only been out of jail for two weeks when he launched the “potentially fatal” attack.
Brandon Lega-Frost, who has a horrific history of unprovoked violence, bashed the man with the large garden tool as he sat waiting for a train at Dandenong railway station in 2020.
He asked the victim if he had a cigarette, and when the man said no, Lega-Frost hit the in the face with a shovel he was wielding.
Nearby PSOs heard the fracas and Lega-Frost walked towards them, only to quickly run back to the victim and hit him with the shovel twice more.
He was capsicum-sprayed, police were called and he was arrested.
Over the years before the shovel attack Lega-Frost had been responsible for a litany of violent crimes.
In 2014 he punched and kicked seven people, including a 14-year-old boy with autism and an intellectually disabled man, on buses and at train stations in the Dandenong area.
He was jailed for a year over the shovel attack.
HAIMING CHEN
A remorseless killer’s chilling fatal attack on a man in broad daylight at a busy Melbourne train station was captured on CCTV.
was jailed for five years.
Haiming Chen, 27, stabbed 27-year-old Junjie Wang 14 times with a kitchen knife in front of shocked commuters at Clayton station on April 20, 2010.
The pair had been involved in a dispute over a second-hand car sale.
Footage captured Chen searching for Mr Wang, then viciously attacking him before disposing of the black-handled knife in a nearby garden.
Chen then fled interstate but was captured with police finding him with a 96-page exercise book containing handwritten notes about his killing of Mr Wang.
Chen was sentenced to a five-year minimum jail term for the frenzied attack.
JESSE SIMM
A registered sex offender had been out of jail only nine months when he went on a day long masturbation marathon, starting at a public bus stop and continuing in the police cells.
Jesse Simm, 46, of Heidelberg, pleaded guilty to charges of indecency and committing a sexual act in the presence of others stemming from a drug-fuelled sex offending spree on April Fools’ Day.
The court heard Simm was lying on the ground in broad daylight at a bus stop on Turnham Ave in Rosanna when an approaching schoolgirl noticed he had his pants around his ankles and was obviously masturbating.
A passer-by reacted by saying: “You have got to be f---king joking, put it away mate”.
According to a police summary, Simm continued masturbating inside an interview room at Heidelberg Police Station.
Simm was sentenced to 100 days jail.
VANESSA ROBERTS
A grown woman took part in the brutal, premeditated bashing of a teenage girl at the South Morang train station, sparked by a suspicion the teen spreading rumours about her.
Vanessa Roberts, 43, of Mill Park, is now serving a 12 month community corrections order after last month pleading guilty to affray, assault, and intentionally causing injury.
The Heidelberg Magistrates Court heard Roberts, then 40, was hanging out with a group of teenagers at the station in February 2019 when the group arranged to meet their victim at the nearby Plenty Valley Westfields.
Roberts, her co-offenders and the victim were hanging out around the shopping centre, where Roberts “spoke to the co-accuseds and encouraged them to assault the victim in retribution … believing the victim to be spreading rumours about (her)”.
LAUSEI ASIATA
Shepparton drug dealer and Mongols outlaw motorcycle gang associate Lausei Asiata sold more than $50,000 worth of cocaine and a gun to an undercover cop in June.
Asiata and two co-offenders travelled to Seymour train station on June 21 this year where they sold 83.8g worth of cocaine to an undercover officer for $21,900 after they struck a deal on social media.
On July 4, the officer contacted Asiata’s co-offender where they agreed to sell him 112.1g of cocaine worth $29,200.
The drugs were handed over at Seymour train station shortly after.
Asiata was sentenced to five months behind bars with 66 days already served, fined $500 and ordered to pay $5000 in compensation in September.
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