7-Eleven axe attacker gets 9 years’ jail
A transgender woman who attacked two customers with an axe in a suburban servo will be jailed for a maximum of nine years.
WARNING: Graphic
Evie Amati, the transgender woman who attacked with an axe customers buying milk and a pie in a suburban 7-Eleven has been sentenced to a maximum of nine years in prison.
Amati, 26, was sentenced today on three counts of attempted murder by wounding committed at the convenience store in Sydney two years ago.
Judge Mark Williams imposed a non-parole period of four years and six months.
Amati gave two of her victims blows to their heads after swinging at them with a long-handled axe as they queued to pay for the pie and carton of milk in the early hours of a Saturday morning.
Caught on CCTV, footage of the brutal attacks include frightening images of victims Ben Rimmer and Sharon Hacker being axed to the ground.
Gory scenes ensue of Mr Rimmer bleeding on the shop floor of the convenience store in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Enmore.
Amati, who pleaded not guilty on the grounds of mental illness and trauma from her transgender operation, was found guilty by a jury’s unanimous verdict last August after a five-week trial.
After the verdict was read out, Amati threw herself over the dock and sobbed.
Amati’s trial heard she had consumed vodka, cannabis and the “love drug” MDA after a failed Tinder date with a 25-year-old woman left her feeling “ugly” that the woman was not “attracted” to her.
Following the aborted date and before she launched the axe attack, Amati sent Facebook messages to the woman, including “One day I’m going to kill a lot of people and it will be your fault”.
The attacks by Amati took place after 2am on January 7, 2017.
In the aftermath, Mr Rimmer can be seen pulling off his T-shirt as blood continues to flow from his head.
At Amati’s trial last year, witness Nathan Wood told the court how he was outside the 7-Eleven when he saw her come out of the store carrying an axe dripping with blood.
Nathan Wood said that he was walking home after 2am on January 7 last year when he saw “a fight inside … some goods inside the shop getting knocked over”.
“I saw a person inside raise an object from overhead and down hard with it,” Mr Wood said. “That’s when I saw a body on the floor and blood spatter.
“I saw a second body collapse to the floor. And I saw Ms Amati exit the building with a dripping axe.
“She has locked eyes with me and was crossing straight towards me. She started to raise her axe.
“I realised she was intending to do harm so I made a mad dash to the end of the block.”
After the verdict, one of Amati’s victims, Sharon Hacker, told news.com au she was “happy” about the guilty verdict.
“Happy dance,” Ms Hacker said, “I can’t help but feel happy. It gives us all closure.”
Ms Hacker lost 25kg since the attack and had continuing nerve pain and psychosocial problems. She had tried to protect her daughter from the CCTV video of the incident, but it was “all over the place”.
Amati’s barrister Charles Waterstreet told the trial on its first day that Ms Amati was on a cocktail of drugs and had “lost her mind”.
“The CCTV captures the body of Ms Amati, there is no doubt. The question you have to decide is where was her mind?” he said.
Mr Waterstreet described the “excruciating pain” Amati had endured in transitioning her gender.
Amati took the stand during the trial and gave evidence that she was high on drugs on the night of the attack and heard a voice telling her to “kill and maim” and “start the rise of hell on Earth”.
Amati took the stand at trial to testify she was high on drugs on the night of the attack.
She said she started hearing “inaudible whispers” as she walked home, smoked two joints on the balcony to “anaesthetise” herself, rocked back-and-forth and listened to her favourite song, Flatline by US metal band Periphery.
“I just wanted someone to come and stroke my head and tell me that everything would be OK,” Amati said.
“I only really had one more memory … that voice that had been telling me to kill and maim, and inflict pain on people and start the rise of hell on Earth.
“I recall everything going quiet and feeling that voice come inside and I remember that smile, the smile that was not mine, a sinister smile that plastered my face that I couldn’t control and then I black(ed) out.”
But Crown prosector Daniel McMahon told the trial that Amati had lashed out angrily with the axe because of the romantic rejection on the night of the incident.
Mr McMahon played the CCTV footage of the two store attacks and pointed out Amati appeared to have waited until Mr Rimmer was distracted before striking him in the face with the axe.
He noted Ms Hacker was also attacked when she was not looking, and said Amati had feigned unconsciousness when found in a nearby courtyard afterwards.
Mr McMahon noted the axe was located standing up against the wall, near where she had apparently collapsed to the ground.
Amati denied she was angry, saying she had “experienced rejection countless times before”.
She said that from late 2016, she’d had violent hallucinations involving an axe she had just bought and saw visions of herself running at police with it and being shot dead.
Amati has been in custody since her arrest two years ago and was last incarcerated at Mary Wade Women’s Correctional Centre in Sydney.