‘There you go c--t, I’ve chopped your hand off’: Allen Maroney jailed for horror machete attack

When Allen Maroney told his 62-year-old neighbour he’d just ‘chopped your hand off’ he replied ‘Well you better f--king stop then’, later telling a court ‘to my amazement and shock, he did’.

Katherine man Allen Patrick Maroney will be eligible for parole in 2029.

A Katherine man who “brought a machete to a fist fight” and used it to chop off his neighbour’s hand before doctors miraculously managed to reattach it has been jailed for 10 years.

Allen Patrick Maroney, 57, was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury in February of one count each of entering the 62-year-old’s unit with intent to assault him and causing him serious harm.

The court heard there had been a period of “animosity” between the two men in the lead-up to the morning of November 21, 2022 when the victim walked outside and called out “Come on Allen, let’s get this over and done with”.

The older man told the jury Maroney struck him on the head with the machete as he walked out his front door before following him back inside where he tried to defend himself with a “fighting stick”.

“I grabbed that fighting stick and hit him three times over the head, I think the second time it broke,” he said.

“He came out swinging wildly with the machete, he got me on my three right fingers, the first three on my right hand, got me on the legs.

“Then I was throwing punches and he was swinging the machete and I didn’t feel it, didn’t see it, he just said ‘There you go c--t, I’ve chopped your hand off’ and I said ‘Well you better f--king stop then’ and then to my amazement and shock, he did.”

The court heard there had been a period of ‘animosity’ between the two Katherine men in the lead up to the horrifying attack.

In setting a five-year non-parole period, Justice John Reeves said even if the victim struck Maroney first, he responded with a “separate and retaliatory attack” which did not amount to self-defence.

“Instead, your response to his verbal aggression was, in all the circumstances, demonstrably excessive and unreasonable,” he said.

“That is, in using a 50cm machete to rain blows on a person who, except for a short period when he attempted to defend himself with his fighting stick inside his unit, was unarmed.”

Justice Reeves said after “unsuccessfully seeking help from others in the unit complex” the man lay down in the shade of a tree where “he thought he was going to die”.

“As a result of his injuries (he) was evacuated to the Royal Darwin Hospital where a team of surgeons worked for several hours to reattach his severed left hand,” he said.

In his victim impact statement, the man said he could no longer eat with a knife and fork or tie his shoelaces and would not be able to work for at least two years.

“I still have dreams about my hand being on the ground and blood spurting out of my arm,” he said.

“On that day I really did think I was going to die, I had a lot of shit happen to me growing up but this was by far the scariest time of my life.”